50¢/Free to Deployed Areas

stripes.com

Volume 79, No. 134 ©SS 2020 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2020

FACES Pearl Jam gets political again during hiatusPage 17

MILITARY Army chaplain jailed for drunken behavior, gas theftPage 3

WORLD SERIES Stars shine for Dodgers in Game 1 win over RaysBack page

Tricare enrollment fees set to increase for many next year » Page 6

KALLYSTA CASTILLO, U.S. NAVY/TNS

Petty officer 3rd class Teddi Young is one of the USS Ford’s all female bridge watch section, known as the Iron 9.

BY COREY DICKSTEIN

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment might re-tain an “enduring” presence in Eastern Europe even after the unit’s soldiers leave Germany, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday.

Esper said he is close to or has reached agreements with defense officials in several Eastern Eu-ropean nations to host rotations of American forces as the United States works to withdraw about 12,000 troops from Germany. In July, the defense secretary an-nounced the plan to move troops out of Germany, saying the 2nd Cavalry Regiment — now the only brigade-sized U.S. ground combat unit stationed full time in Europe — would be relocated to the continental United States.

“Since that announcement, as well as the signing of the de-fense cooperation agreement with Poland, my recent meetings with defense ministers from Ro-mania and Bulgaria, and corre-spondence received from Baltic states, there is now the real op-portunity of keeping the 2nd Cav-alry Regiment forward in some of these countries on an enduring basis,” Esper said in a speech at the Atlantic Council, a Washing-ton-based think tank.

Esper’s initial force restruc-turing plan was announced July 29 as President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to remove troops from Germany, speeding up a long-planned review of theSEE EUROPE ON PAGE 5

Esper eyes an ‘enduring’ presence for unit in Europe

Women on the watch BY DAVE RESS

Daily Press (Newport News, Va.)

Women have been serving on Navy ships for a quarter-cen-tury, although the deck depart-ment — especially the bridge

watch sections responsible for steering the ship and keeping a lookout for hazards — have remained a mainly male preserve.

That changed with USS Gerald R. Ford’s underway last month — all the deck depart-ment sailors assigned to the boatswain’s mates bridge watch teams were women. They call themselves the Iron 9.

“They did great. If there’s a grade high-er than ’A’, that’s what I’d give them,” said Petty Officer 2nd Class Faeline Matthews, the boatswain’s mate who leads the team and whose job is to make sure the relatively young sailors in a bridge watch section are qualified to do the work. “I think it shows

what we can do.”While one of the Iron 9, Seaman Adri-

yanna Jones, thinks the group’s achieve-ment will influence how female sailors are seen for years to come, she believes they also showed something about the deck department.

“Since we’re on an aircraft carrier, a lot of people focus on flight deck opera-tions and aircraft maneuvering,” she said. “Sometimes deck department is overlooked as an essential asset, but recently there’s been a lot more acknowledgement towards

SEE WOMEN ON PAGE 5

They call USS Ford’s all-female bridge watch

section the ‘Iron 9’RELATED 10 NATO members now meet 2% defense spending benchmark Page 5

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 2 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

American Roundup ..... 14Classified .................. 13Comics ...................... 18Crossword ................. 18Faces ........................ 17Opinion ..................... 15Sports .................. 19-24

T O D A YIN STRIPES

Military ratesEuro costs (Oct. 22) .............................. $1.16Dollar buys (Oct. 22) ........................€0.8217British pound (Oct. 22) ........................ $1.28Japanese yen (Oct. 22) ......................103.00South Korean won (Oct. 22) ..........1,105.00

Commercial ratesBahrain (Dinar) ....................................... 0.3770British pound ......................................... $1.3117Canada (Dollar) ....................................... 1.3112China (Yuan) ........................................... 6.6537Denmark (Krone) .................................... 6.2746Egypt (Pound)....................................... 15.6950Euro ............................................ $1.1862/0.8430Hong Kong (Dollar) ................................ 7.7501Hungary (Forint) .................................... 306.61Israel (Shekel) ........................................ 3.3775Japan (Yen).............................................. 104.53Kuwait (Dinar) ........................................ 0.3055Norway (Krone) ...................................... 9.2051Philippines (Peso) .................................... 48.51Poland (Zloty) .............................................. 3.85Saudi Arabia (Riyal) .............................. 3.7508Singapore (Dollar)................................. 1.3544South Korea (Won) ............................ 1,132.50

Switzerland (Franc) .............................. 0.9044Thailand (Baht) ......................................... 31.23Turkey (Lira) ............................................. 7.8340(Military exchange rates are those available to customers at military banking facilities in the country of issuance for Japan, South Korea, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. For nonlocal currency exchange rates (i.e., purchasing British pounds in Germany), check with your local military banking facility. Commercial rates are interbank rates provided for reference when buying currency. All figures are foreign currencies to one dollar, except for the British pound, which is represented in dollars-to-pound, and the euro, which is dollars-to-euro.)

EXCHANGE RATES

INTEREST RATESPrime rate ................................................ 3.25Discount rate .......................................... 0.25Federal funds market rate ................... 0.093-month bill ............................................. 0.1030-year bond ........................................... 1.60

WEATHER OUTLOOK

Bahrain92/77

Baghdad96/64

Doha95/78

KuwaitCity

98/70

Riyadh91/57

Djibouti95/81

Kandahar79/43

Kabul79/47

THURSDAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST FRIDAY IN THE PACIFIC

Misawa63/43

Guam85/78

Tokyo70/57

Okinawa75/70

Sasebo68/59

Iwakuni68/54

Seoul54/34

Osan52/42 Busan

60/42

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

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

Mildenhall/Lakenheath

61/45

Ramstein66/55

Stuttgart68/54

Lajes,Azores65/60

Rota68/59

Morón68/54 Sigonella

72/53

Naples71/52

Aviano/Vicenza63/53

Pápa66/45

Souda Bay72/61

THURSDAY IN EUROPE

Brussels63/50

Zagan62/55

Drawsko Pomorskie

64/53

BUSINESS/WEATHER

GM’s Tenn. factory to become electric vehicle plant Associated Press

DETROIT — General Motors plans to spend $2 billion to con-vert its Spring Hill, Tenn ., assem-bly plant into a third U.S. site to build future electric vehicles.

The Detroit automaker also says it will spend another $153 million to upgrade five Michigan factories for future vehicles.

The company will build the Ca-dillac Lyriq, a small electric SUV, at the Spring Hill factory. Gaso-line-powered Cadillac SUVs will continue to be built at the plant,

and it will also get additional un-specified electric vehicles, GM said in a statement Tuesday.

“We’re investing in U.S. manu-facturing to ensure that GM can build the vehicles that custom-ers love today as well as transi-tion to an all-electric future,” Gerald Johnson, GM’s executive vice president of global manu-facturing, said during an online announcement. “We want to put everyone in an electric vehicle.”

The Lyriq is due in showrooms sometime late in 2022. GM also is

expected to announce details of an all-electric GMC Hummer pickup truck this week. They’re among 20 electric models the company plans to sell globally by 2023.

The Spring Hill facility em-ploys about 3,400 hourly workers who make the Cadillac XT5 and XT6 gas-powered SUVs as well as a GMC SUV. The complex, which is GM’s biggest in North America, also makes four engines that go into GM trucks and SUVs.

Renovation of the plant will begin immediately, GM said .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 3Thursday, October 22, 2020

BY HEATHER OSBOURNE

Austin (Texas) American-Statesman

AUSTIN, Texas — Fort Hood officials on Tuesday said the family of U.S. Army Spc. Van-essa Guillen received word that the Army classified the soldier’s death as “in the line of duty.”

Army officials spoke with the Guillen family of Houston, say-ing the new classification would allow them to receive Army ben-efits on behalf of the 20-year-old who is thought to have been killed by a fellow soldier on post, Fort Hood officials said in a written statement.

Typically, those benefits include compensation to help the family with expenses, a funeral with full military honors, life insurance

and final pay and allowances.The Guillen family will not uti-

lize the funeral offered to them by the Army, however, because the soldier was buried in August.

Guillen was last seen while working in a Fort Hood weapons room in April. Her dismembered remains were found a few months later near the Leon River in Bell County.

Investigators believe a fellow soldier, Spc. Aaron David Robin-son, beat Guillen to death with a hammer the morning of April 22.

Robinson fatally shot himself July 1 when local authorities con-fronted him off post, Killeen po-lice have said.

Authorities have accused Rob-inson’s 22-year-old girlfriend,

Cecily Aguilar of Killeen, of help-ing Robinson dismember, burn and bury Guillen’s body about 20 miles from the post. Aguilar has been charged in federal court with conspiracy to tamper with evidence.

The soldier’s family continu-ously called for a congressional investigation into Fort Hood’s handling of the case, saying Army officials failed to property search for the missing soldier, identify suspects or take allegations that Guillen was sexually harassed by fellow soldiers seriously.

While U.S. Army officials say no substantive evidence proves Guillen was sexually harassed, the family’s allegations led to the viral hashtag #IAmVanessaGuil-

len, which inspired former and active service members to share stories of sexual misconduct in the military.

Several investigations are on-going at Fort Hood, looking into leadership and how they handle cases of missing soldiers and sex-ual assault claims.

The Guillen case reached the White House in July, when Presi-dent Donald Trump invited the family to share their grievances with him in person.

Trump during the meeting promised resources to help look into the family’s complaints in-volving Guillen’s case and that of other slain soldiers.

He also offered to help pay for Guillen’s funeral expenses, but

the family explained that theservice and burial costs were al-ready covered.

The family added that they didnot want to have a military funer-al, but one that honored the sol-dier’s personality and heritage.

The Guillen family instead helda private ceremony in their home-town of Houston.

The soldier was placed in a casket painted with her name, ac-companied by an American flag, Mexico’s coat of arms and, to rep-resent her favorite sport, a soccerball.

Army officials on Tuesdaysaid they remain in contact withthe Guillen family to keep theminformed of additional actions being taken at Fort Hood.

MILITARY

BY JENNIFER H. SVAN

Stars and Stripes

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germa-ny — A series of bad decisions, from stealing gas to smashing the window of his estranged wife’s car, has landed an Army chaplain assigned to Stuttgart in jail for a month.

Chaplain (Maj.) Donald V. Wood was sentenced Tuesday at a general court-martial, after a military judge found him guilty of larceny, conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and of damaging nonmilitary property. He pleaded guilty to being absent without leave.

The one-day trial in Kaiser-slautern depicted a chaplain struggling with life, who was un-able to let go of his marriage of more than 26 years and who had lost the confidence of his supervi-sors after a string of misconduct over the past 18 months.

The theft occurred when Wood, a Full Gospel chaplain, drove off from the Ramstein Air Base shop-pette in May 2019 without paying for $99 in fuel. The next day, on Mother’s Day, military police were called to escort Wood from Macaroni Grill on Ramstein after he drank five blood-orange cos-mopolitan cocktails and passed out, according to testimony from the bartender who served him.

The property damage occurred about two months later, when Wood, who has been separated from his wife for years, busted the rear window of her car. He had shown up at her home un-announced one evening, yelled profanities and banged on her apartment door before breaking the car window, his wife testified.

Wood was also found not guilty of stalking his wife, on a charge

related to that night and another incident last spring involving text messages.

Wood pleaded guilty to being absent without leave from his job on Panzer Kaserne for U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart, where he was a resource manager in the garri-son’s religious support office.

Wood admitted in court to ig-noring an email from his supervi-sor in late March 2020 revoking his leave early and ordering him to report back to work. Mili-tary police picked him up about two days later at his home in Kaiserslautern.

“I was distraught due to life circumstances,” Wood told the military judge, Col. Christopher Fredrikson. “I am so sorry to my supervisors and the Army.”

Government prosecutors said that Wood “acted with impunity,” arguing that “his emotional pain” didn’t excuse or justify his mis-conduct and that as a chaplain, he can’t help others if he can’t han-dle his own affairs. They asked that Wood be dismissed from the service and sentenced to a com-bined four months in jail.

The defense, in asking for a reprimand and forfeiture in pay as punishment, noted that Wood stood to lose some $1.2 million in benefits when he becomes eli-gible to retire in 2024.

“This is a time to look at a chaplain as a human being … as a person who doesn’t have all the answers in this world,” defense counsel Capt. Daniel Franco-Santiago said.

Fredrikson gave Wood jail time that added up to three months but made the terms cumulative, so Wood will only have to spend a month at the Army’s regional cor-rectional facility at Sembach.svan.jennifer@stripes.com

Drunken behavior, gas theft lands chaplain in jail

Army rules Vanessa Guillen’s death as ‘in line of duty,’ grants benefits

US jets intercept Russian bombers off Alaskan coast for 14th time this year

NORAD

An F-22 Raptor from the North American Aerospace Defense Command intercepts a Russian Tu-95 “Bear” bomber in international airspace near Alaska on Monday.

BY COREY DICKSTEIN

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — F-22 Rap-tor stealth fighter jets scrambled late Monday to intercept Russian long-range bombers and fight-ers flying off Alaska’s coast, the North American Aerospace De-fense Command said Tuesday.

The fighters intercepted a for-mation of two Tu-95 Bear bomb-ers, two Su-35 Flanker fighter jets and an A-50 airborne early warning aircraft, according to a NORAD statement. The Russian aircraft never entered U.S. air-space, which extends 12 nautical miles from American shores.

NORAD said the aircraft flew within about 30 nautical miles of Alaskan shores and “loitered within” the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone for about 90 minutes. The zone is a stretch of mostly international airspace some 200 nautical miles off the

Alaskan coast where American officials expect aircraft to iden-tify themselves in the interest of national security.

“NORAD forces remain on alert 24/7/365 to respond to potential threats to Canada and the Unit-ed States,” said Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander NORAD and U.S. Northern Com-mand. “The agility and readiness of our personnel ensures we are successful in addressing poten-tial aerospace threats with the appropriate response at the right time.”

The intercepts on Monday were categorized as routine. It was the 14th such incident off Alaska’s coast in 2020, said Air Force Capt. Cameron Hillier, a NORAD spokesman. He said NORAD has averaged about six or seven in-tercepts near Alaska since 2007, when Russia restarted its long-range aviation program.

In a statement Tuesday on

Twitter, Russia’s military said the bomber formations flew the scheduled 12-hour training flightover “neutral waters of the seasof Bering, Okhotsk, as well as Chukchi and Beaufort seas.” It acknowledged they were inter-cepted by F-22s for a portion of the flights.

Just as the U.S. regularly in-tercepts Russian aircraft near its borders, Russian aircraft in-tercept American flights nears its airspace, including several inrecent months.

In one such intercept in August,NATO said a Russian Su-27 fight-er jet entered Danish airspace during an intercept of a U.S. B-52bomber over the Baltic Sea. TheU.S. also accused two Russianfighter jets of conducting an “un-safe and unprofessional” inter-cept of another B-52 in August over the Black Sea, flying within about 100 feet of the bomber.dickstein.corey@stripes.com

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 4 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The Univer-sity of Pittsburgh is conducting a study to determine the best way for the Marine Corps to approach gender integration at its two boot camps, the service announced Tuesday.

The study comes as the Marine Corps faces a looming deadline set in the fiscal year 2020 Nation-al Defense Authorization Act that mandates the service end gender-segregated training within five years at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., and integrate training within eight years at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego .

The Marine Corps wants “an independent, scientifically cred-ible study of the models of entry-level military training to identify potential alternatives to increase gender integration of entry-level training,” Bradley Nindl, a co-principal investigator and senior adviser for the study, said in a statement issued Tuesday.

The study is a $2 million con-tract between the Marine Corps

and the university’s Neuromus-cular Research Laboratory and Warrior Human Performance Research Center, where Nindl is the director. He is also a professor and vice chairman for research in the school’s Department of Sports Medicine and Nutrition.

The University of Pittsburgh School of Health and Rehabilita-tion Sciences also will partner on the study with the University of South Carolina’s Department of Exercise Science, Insight Policy Research, and representatives from the University of Maryland’s Department of Sociology, accord-ing to the Marine Corps.

The study will start Wednesday and is expected to last 18 months, according to Nindl. The results are to be published in a peer-re-viewed journal, however which one is still to be determined, he said.

“Synthesis of the results of this study by a non-Defense Depart-ment entity will ensure that the findings of the study are unbiased and that actionable recommenda-tions are grounded in evidence. Vetting of the findings through

the peer-review process will further substantiate the results,” Nindl said.

The Marine Corps remains the only service that does not fully integrate recruits in all levels of training and it only trains female recruits at Parris Island. While the service has recently begun integrating male and female re-cruits at the company level at Parris Island, it is only done when there are smaller numbers of fe-male recruits during the slower training months.

The study will include inter-views, focus-group surveys, physical performance data col-lection, saliva samples for cor-tisol — a marker for stress, and injury surveillance, according to Nindl. One goal of the study is to look at “best practices” from the other military services and see how they can be adapted to the Marine Corps, he said.

The study will specifically ad-dress “the sociological effects to increased gender integration, and consider training models which maintain the same level of discipline, physical fitness, atten-

tion to detail, and camaraderie,” according to the Marine Corps statement.

Last month, Marine Comman-dant Gen. David Berger said the Marine Corps faces two chal-lenges with fully integrating the boot camps: finding enough fe-male Marines to be drill instruc-tors at each recruit depot and infrastructure.

Parris Island has limited bar-racks space for women, and San Diego has none, so even getting women and men to train on both coasts immediately cannot hap-pen, Berger said.

“It’s definitely not as simple as build a couple buildings, and

we’ll be there,” he has said aboutinfrastructure concerns at bootcamps.

In the meantime, the Marine Corps will conduct its own studyin the winter by sending a groupof female drill instructors to Ma-rine Corps Recruit Depot SanDiego to see how the service cantrain female recruits at the base for the first time, Berger said last month.

Despite the challenges, Bergersaid in five years he would like tosee as many companies as pos-sible training platoons composedof men and women.kenney.caitlin@stripes.comTwitter: @caitlinmkenney

BY MISSY RYAN

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Democratic senators appealed Tuesday for support of a legislative proposal that would suspend implementa-tion of the Army’s new fitness test, arguing the high-profile ini-tiative to improve physical readi-ness is based on faulty data and could undermine the goal of cre-ating a diverse force.

In an Oct. 20 letter to the chair-men and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Ser-vices committees, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., called the rollout of the Army Combat Fit-ness Test “premature” and said the exam could damage some sol-diers’ professional prospects.

“We have considerable con-cerns regarding the negative impact [the test] may already be having on so many careers,” they said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. “It is imperative that we pause implementation until all questions and concerns are an-swered. Soldiers’ careers depend on it and the continued lethality of our force requires it.”

The senators asked the com-mittee leaders to ensure a mea-sure that would suspend rollout of the test until an independent study can be conducted is includ-ed in the final version of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, an annual defense bill. The

provision appeared in the Senate-passed version of the bill, but not in the House version.

Lawmakers are expected to convene to reconcile the two ver-sions of the bill after the Nov. 3 presidential election.

The test has become a charged issue within the Army as it pits the service’s effort to establish gender-blind standards and im-prove soldier readiness against fears it could pose an additional challenge to retaining skilled troops and compound obstacles faced by underrepresented popu-lations within the force. Critics

say it could have a disproportion-ate impact on women, who make up 15% of the Army but occupy few leadership positions.

Army data show that, 18 months after small cohorts of soldiers started taking the test on a pro-visional basis, women continue to fail at dramatically higher rates than men. In the second quarter of 2020, 54% of women failed the test, compared to 7% of men.

The stark gender gap comes as Pentagon leaders express an urgent desire to rectify the mili-tary’s legacy of racial and gender inequity, issues that have long

dogged the force but were given new prominence when race-re-lated unrest gripped the nation this summer.

The test consists of six events, including a dead lift, weighted ball throw and, most problemati-cally for women who have taken it to date, a “leg tuck,” which re-quires soldiers to lift themselves up from a pullup bar using their arm, core and leg muscles.

The test has different require-ments for different career fields, but critics say that even the least demanding standards could re-main out of reach for some. They

also say that consistently lowerscores for female soldiers, whoare typically lighter than men and thus must lift weights thatare heavier relative to their bodyweight, could hold women back.

The Army did not provide an immediate comment.

While Army leaders have saidthe test won’t impact evaluations until 2022 at the earliest, it is expected to eventually affect en-listed personnel’s promotion po-tential and officers’ careers.

Army officials say the test isa product of years of research and is designed to better preparetroops for conditions they wouldencounter in combat. It places a higher emphasis on muscularstrength than the previous Armyfitness test, which was adjustedfor age and gender and includedpushups, pullups and a two-mile run.

Officials have also said troopscan do an alternate to the leg tuck, a two-minute plank, while the testis being finalized.

But some soldiers have pri-vately voiced fears the test couldmake it even harder for the Armyto secure personnel for high-de-mand fields like cyber and say the exercises aren’t relevant for certain troops, including medical professionals and lawyers.

In their letter, Gillibrand and Blumenthal questioned the data used to develop the test, sayingnot enough women were included in the early testing groups, amongother problems .

MILITARY

Senators seek to delay, study Army’s new fitness test

Gender integration study set for USMC boot camps

ANDREW E. FIGUEROA/U.S. Army

Instructors observe soldiers as they perform warm-up drills prior to conducting a diagnostic Army Combat Fitness Test at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, this month . The test pits the service’s effort to establish gender-blind standards against fears it could pose an additional challenge to retaining skilled troops .

RYAN HAGEALI/U.S. Marine Corps

Recruits clean their rifles during the Crucible on Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., last month . The University of Pittsburgh is conducting a study to help the Marines address gender integration at its two boot camps, the service announced Tuesday.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 5Thursday, October 22, 2020

FROM FRONT PAGE

posture of American forces throughout Europe.

While that initial plan called for returning the regiment’s 4,500 soldiers and 2,000 other troops to the United States, Esper said he would also work to position troops closer to Russian borders to bet-ter reassure allies closest to the rival nation.

“We need to move a little bit further east [because] it helps us with the time [and] distance chal-lenges, if you will, in case there is some type of really aggressive action by the Russians,” he said Tuesday.

Esper’s initial plan envisioned the 2nd Cavalry Regiment and other U.S.-based Stryker brigade combat teams conducting heal-to-toe rotations to train with NATO partners primarily in the Black Sea region. Now, Esper said he wants troops constantly training in those countries, as well as Po-land and the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He indi-cated Tuesday that the role could permanently belong to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, however Pen-tagon officials said later Tuesday that was not the current plan.

For now, the Pentagon is con-tinuing with the plan to move the 2nd Cavalry Regiment to a new home station in the United States, said Army Lt. Col Thomas Camp-bell, a Pentagon spokesman. How-ever, it remains unclear when the unit could leave its current home station in Vilseck, Germany, or where it will be stationed.

“The planning process for the projected moves continues, which includes consultations with our allies and partners in the region, as well as members of Congress,” Campbell said.

The Pentagon’s plan to reor-ganize troops in Europe could face obstacles in Congress, where

some Democrats and Republi-cans have questioned the move. The House-passed version of the fiscal year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act includes a pro-vision that would halt the with-drawal of forces from Germany. The Senate-passed version of the same bill, which sets annual Pentagon policy and spending priorities, does not include such language. The two versions of the NDAA have not yet been rec-onciled, so it remains unclear if the final version will address the issue.

In a House Armed Services Committee hearing last month to examine the plans, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said Pentagon officials had not been transparent about their planning. Smith, the committee’s chairman, added he did not “think this plan was par-ticularly well thought out.”

Esper has long defended the plan, which Trump said was in retaliation for what the president has characterized as insufficient defense spending by Germany.

On Tuesday, Esper called on NATO countries to spend more money on defense. In 2014, the alliance’s nations set a target for each to spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product on their own defenses by 2024. To date, only 10 countries have reached that objective.

“We have a lot more work to do,” Esper said. “We need countries to contribute more, and not because it’s some arbitrary threshold. I think it’s a solid floor upon which to build upon, because if you have that capability … we will deter conflict [with Russia] and we won’t have to worry about the things that we concern ourselves about right now.”dickstein.corey@stripes.comTwitter: @CDicksteinDC

Europe: Pentagon plan to reorganize troops could face obstacles in Congress

FROM FRONT PAGE

how necessary we are to the ship.”What a bridge watch section does requires con-

centration and focus.At the helm, a post that on the Ford combines

what helmsman, who steers the ship, and lee helms-man, who controls its speed, do on other carriers, a sailor has two screens, with dials displaying the Ford’s current direction and trim.

Keeping a 100,000 ton carrier capable of 30 knots on course can be a strain, which is why the drill is for the helm, the bridge messenger and the three lookouts in the section to spell each other. They ro-tate every hour through the watch.

Not that being a lookout is stress-free. The job involves being alert for hazards — like the small craft that can seem to pop up out of the blue, said Lt. Brandon Carney, the Ford’s assistant first lieu-tenant, who regularly stands watch as officer of the deck.

Lookouts have phones hanging on cords around their neck so they can call in anything they spot. But except for their phones, orders and reports come in calm, conversational tones across the bridge.

“There’s a lot of information flowing,” Carney

said.He should know. Carney’s job, when he’s on the

bridge, is to make sure orders from the captain orthe officer who has the conn — overall direction forwhere the carrier is going — are relayed and car-ried out, as he helps coordinate and respond to whatnavigators, the engine room and sailors on radarwatch, working in a compartment behind the bridgeitself, report.

In his 15 years in the Navy, Carney said he’s never seen an all-female bridge watch section.

“I think it sends a great signal to the Ford, and tothe whole Navy,” he said. “The deck department’straditionally been mostly male.”

He’s got high hopes for the Iron 9. “It’s basicallyOJT (on the job training),” he said. “They have spe-cific things they have to do and get checked off on …then BM2 Matthews tests them to be sure they’vegot it.”

And, as far as he’s concerned, Matthews and the Iron 9 are the future of the Navy.

“These boatswain’s mates have the best workethic I’ve ever seen in my career,” he said. “I caneasily see some of these sailors commissioning dur-ing their time in the Navy. The sky’s the limit forthis crew.”

Women: Ford’s bridge watch team is all female

MILITARY

NATO members’ military spending up for 6th year

BY JOHN VANDIVER

Stars and Stripes

STUTTGART, Germany — Military spending among the U.S.’s allies in Europe and Canada in-creased for the sixth consecutive year in 2020 as one-third of member states reached a key alliance benchmark, a NATO report released Wednesday said.

But Germany, which has been accused by Presi-dent Donald Trump of not spending enough on de-fense, spent only 1.57% of gross domestic product on its military, the report said.

Germany’s defense spending was cited by Trump as a reason for issuing a directive to pull nearly 12,000 U.S. troops out of the country, although a plan to do so is still being developed by the Pentagon and it is unclear when a withdrawal would happen.

Ten of NATO’s 30 members were estimated to be spending at least 2% of their GDP on their militar-ies, up from only three in 2014, the report said.

“We expect this trend to continue,” NATO Secre-tary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

NATO members have been under intense pres-sure to ramp up defense spending by the Trump ad-ministration. It increased by 4.3% among European

allies and Canada for the year, Stoltenberg said.Collectively, NATO members including the U.S.

spent roughly $1.03 trillion on defense for 2020,said the report, which was released a day ahead of ameeting of NATO defense ministers, including U.S.Defense Secretary Mark Esper, where spendingwill be on the agenda, Stoltenberg said.

In 2014, when allies agreed that all membersshould meet NATO’s 2% spending level by 2024, only the U.S., Greece and the United Kingdom were in compliance. Now, NATO data shows Romania,Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, France and Nor-way meeting the target.

Trump has taken credit for an overall boost in al-lied defense spending in recent years, and Stolten-berg has praised the U.S. president for making it a priority. But the increases date back to 2014 whenRussia’s military intervention in Ukraine led alliesto reverse a downward trend in spending that began when the Cold War ended.

For many allies, especially those along NATO’s eastern flank, Moscow’s aggressive moves were amotivating factor in boosting expenditures.

vandiver.john@stripes.comTwitter: @john_vandiver

STEPHEN DORNBOS/U.S. Army

The U.S. Army’s 1st Squadron, 2nd Calvary Regiment, conducts training at Grafenwoher Training Area, Germany, on Aug. 11 . Defense Secretary Mark Esper says the regiment might retain an “enduring” presence in Europe even after soldiers withdraw from Germany.

RIDGE LEONI/U.S. Navy

All deck department sailors assigned to the boatswain’s mates bridge watch teams on the USS Gerald R. Ford are women. They call themselves the Iron 9.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 6 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

BY STEVE BEYNON

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The first seven recruits for Space Force, the military’s newest service branch, were sworn in Tuesday by Gen. David Thompson, the vice chief of space operations.

Space Force has roughly 2,000 “space professionals” serving. Until now, all the branch’s mem-bers were transfers from the Air Force. This new batch of recruits are the first service members to enlist directly into Space Force.

“Today is an important mile-stone as we stand up the Space Force,” Thompson said in a state-ment. “Until now, we’ve been focused on building our initial ranks with transfers from the Air Force. With these new recruits, we begin to look to the future of our force by bringing in the right people directly to realize our as-pirations of building a tech-savvy service that’s reflective of the na-tion we serve.”

The new recruits all hold the 1C6 military occupation spe-cialty — space systems opera-tions, according to Lynn Kirby, a Space Force spokeswoman. The job focuses on detecting sea-launched ballistic missiles and tracking satellites to assisting in rocket launches and space flight operations.

“Space Force leadership has previously stated diversity among its ranks is one of its priorities in

standing up the new service,” ac-cording to a service statement.

Among the recruits, two are women and five are men, and two are Black and five are white. They are from Colorado, Mary-land, and Virginia, and range in age from 18 to 31.

All seven are bound for seven and a half weeks of basic training at Air Force basic training, which is located at Lackland Air Force

Base, San Antonio.There are no Space Force

recruiting stations yet. Kirby said the Air Force is recruiting for both branches. Space Force hopes to recruit 300 enlisted ser-vice members in 2021 and have 6,500 members overall in a year. Most will come from Air Force transfers.

“We’re excited to see this hap-pen,” said Chief Master Sgt.

Roger A. Towberman, senior en-listed adviser for Space Force. “The Air Force team at basic military training has been out-standing and deserves most of the credit for making this hap-pen quickly. To watch these first Space Force recruits take their oath for the first time is some-thing I will never forget. They are the future, and it’s incredible to be in their service!”

BY CAITLIN M. KENNEY Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON— A fighter pilot ejected safely Tuesday as the F/A-18E Super Hornet that the pilot was flying crashed in Califor-nia in what the Navy described as a “mis-hap” while training, according to a service spokesman.

The fighter jet was from Naval Air Station Lemoore and conducting a routine training flight near Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake at about 10:10 a.m. local time when it “experienced a mishap,” Cmdr. Zach Harrell, a spokesman for Naval Air Forces, said in a statement issued Tuesday.

NAWS China Lake is located in the western Mojave Desert in California, a few hundred miles southwest of NAS Lemoore.

The pilot was able to eject safely and was

taken to a local medical facility to be exam-ined, Harrell said. Navy and local authorities are investigating the incident.

No other information was provided Tues-

day by the Navy regarding the condition of the pilot, the pilot’s unit, or what caused the “mishap.”

In June, two aviators from the “Black Knights” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 154 from Naval Air Station Lemoore were fly-ing an F/A-18F Super Hornet for routine pilot-proficiency training when they had to eject over the Philippine Sea. The aviators were assigned to the carrier wing on the USS Theo-dore Roosevelt at the time of the incident.

NAS Lemoore is located about 37 miles south of Fresno and is home to the Navy’s Strike Fighter Wing Pacific that supports its Pacific Fleet, according to the base’s website. NAWS China Lake supports the Navy’s re-search, testing, and evaluation missions, ac-cording to its website.kenney.caitlin@stripes.comTwitter: @caitlinmkenney

BY STEVE BEYNON

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — Thousands of Tri-care beneficiaries will be required to pay new enrollment fees in 2021.

Tricare Select Group A retirees will be required to pay new fees starting Jan. 1, 2021. An individual’s monthly enrollment fee will be $12.50 or $150 annually.

Monthly family fees will be $25 or $300 annually.

There are 407,431 beneficiaries of Tri-

care Select, according to 2019 data from the Defense Department.

The new fees were mandated by the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act’s reorganization of Tricare, the health care program for service members, retirees and their families.

Any service member who joined the mil-itary before Jan. 1, 2018, is in Select Group A. Select Group B are those who enlisted or commissioned after Jan. 1, 2018, and have already been paying enrollment fees. The Defense Health Agency said there are

no changes to Group B.Beneficiaries will need to contact their

Tricare regional contractors and set up their enrollment payments.

The Tricare regions are: Humana Mili-tary in the eastern United States, Health-Net Federal Services in the west, and International SOS Government Services overseas.

“In order to maintain health cover-age unless waived by law, Tricare Select Group A retired beneficiaries must take action and pay their Tricare Select enroll-

ment fees,” according to a statement from the Defense Health Agency, which over-sees health care for the military.

However, enrollment fees are waived forChapter 61 retirees, their family and survi-vors of deceased service members.

Chapter 61 refers to veterans who weremedically retired from military service with a rated disability of 30% or greater,according to the Army’s Human Resourc-es Command.beynon.steven@stripes.comTwitter: @StevenBeynon

BY KIM GAMEL

Stars and Stripes

SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korea-based American sol-dier died after being found unre-sponsive in the water off a beachin Georgia where he was partici-pating in routine aviation train-ing, the military said Wednesday.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 CraigW. Mulder, 39, was found in thewater on Sunday at Tybee Islandand later pronounced dead by theChatham County coroner, accord-ing to a press release.

“The case remains under in-vestigation, but all in-dications are that he drowned,” 2nd ID spokesman Lt. Col. Mar-tyn Crighton told Stars and Stripes.

Mulder, an Apache Longbow pilot stationed at CampHumphreys, had been with the2nd Combat Aviation Brigade,2nd Infantry Division since No-vember 2018.

The Hubertus, Wis., native was in Georgia for routine training atHunter Army Airfield, the 2nd IDsaid.

Brigade commander Col. AaronMartin said the “Talon team is deeply saddened by the loss ofour friend and teammate” andexpressed deepest condolences tohis friends and loved ones.

“It was an honor to serve with a trusted professional like Craig.During his time here, he servedwith distinction. Craig’s ability to brighten someone’s day with a joke was unparalleled,” Martinsaid.

“He was an optimist who be-lieved in constantly moving for-ward. His efforts will have alasting impact on the soldiers he devotedly mentored and trained,and our operations in Korea,”Martin added.

Mulder completed two deploy-ments to Iraq. .gamel.kim@stripes.comTwitter: @kimgamel

MILITARY

Tricare enrollment fees set to rise for many

Soldier dies while in training

Mulder

Space Force swears in its first recruits

Screenshot from Space Force Facebook live stream

Gen. David Thompson, the vice chief of space operations, swears in Space Force’s first recruits Tuesday.

Super Hornet pilot ejects safely as jet crashes in Calif.

BEN MARGOT/AP

An F/A-18E Super Hornet flies over Death Valley National Park, Calif., in 2017.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 7Thursday, October 22, 2020

BY PHILLIP WALTER WELLMAN Stars and Stripes

KABUL, Afghanistan — Near-ly $19 billion of U.S. money was lost in a decade of war in Afghan-istan to fraud, waste and abuse, a government watchdog report has said.

Most of the losses were attrib-uted to failed counternarcotics and stabilization programs, the Special Inspector General for Af-ghanistan Reconstruction said in a report published Tuesday.

Over $3 billion was lost in the last two years alone, the report said. That, on top of some $15.5 billion that was lost between 2009 and 2017, represents nearly a third of all the expenditures SIGAR has reviewed in the years since it was created in 2008 to track U.S. taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan.

Ninety percent of the losses were caused by waste, which the report defined as “the act of using or expending resources carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.”

Examples of waste given in the report were books supplied for an education program that sat unused because principals and teachers said they were in poor condition, or a sports stadium that sat idle because “it was not designed correctly to host football (soccer) games and did not have a functioning irrigation system.”

“SIGAR also found clear indi-cations of poor workmanship and a lack of maintenance, including falling ceiling tiles, broken drain-age grates, and unlevelled playing surfaces with incomplete water

systems protruding from the foot-ball field,” the report said.

Fraud, including bribery, theft,corruption and bogus contracts,accounted for around 9% of the losses, and abuse of power by of-ficials the remaining 1%.

In one case, a contract betweenthe U.S. Agency for International Development and an Afghan min-ing development program fellthrough because Afghan govern-ment officials didn’t want to pass a law legalizing mines because they or their families controlled illegal extraction operations, thereport said.

Congress has appropriated over $130 billion for reconstruc-tion efforts in Afghanistan sincethe U.S. invaded the country in2001 to dismantle al-Qaida and overthrow the Taliban. Inter-national donors provide aroundthree-quarters of Afghanistan’stotal expenditures, and the World Bank has estimated that the country will need more than $8 billion in foreign aid each yearuntil at least 2024 — three yearsafter all foreign troops are ex-pected to have left the country ifthe U.S. and Taliban uphold allthe terms of a deal they signed in February.

The report was released justover a month into peace talks in Qatar between the Taliban andthe Afghan government, and asthe U.S. continued to draw downtroop numbers.

Kabul’s failure to curb corrup-tion and violence could hinder prospects for peace, SIGAR said. wellman.phillip@stripes.comTwitter: @pwwellman

BY WYATT OLSON

Stars and Stripes

The roughly 250 Marines and sailors who spent the past month assisting wildfire firefighting op-erations in California returned to Camp Pendleton on Tuesday, the U.S. Army said in a news release.

The troops, from the 7th En-gineer Support Battalion, helped suppress the Creek Fire in Cen-tral California and the August Complex in Northern California. Their mission began Sept. 21.

The battalion was one of two active-duty units that trained to become wildland firefighters this fire season, the Army said.

The 14th Brigade Engineer Bat-talion from Joint Base Lewis-Mc-Cord, Wash., supported efforts to combat the August Complex from Sept. 3-27, the Army said.

The active-duty military fire-fighting operations were over-seen by Northern Command’s

Joint Force Land Component Command, which is the Defense Department’s primary organiza-tion for coordinating with civil authorities in responding to natu-ral disasters.

The National Interagency Fire Center had requested military assistance in quelling Califor-nia wildfires, which have blazed through almost 1.9 million acres.

The fires, fueled by dry, windy conditions, destroyed almost

1,000 homes and killed at least three people.

The Creek Fire, which charred an estimated 350,000 acres, was the largest single blaze in Cali-fornia’s history. The August Com-plex, which burned more than 1 million acres, was the largest complex fire the state has ever seen.

“I am so very proud of the young men and women who supported our local, state, and federal part-ners during this record-breaking wildland fire season,” Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson, command-er of U.S. Army North, said in the news release. “The Soldiers, Sailors and Marines learned and adapted quickly to wildland firefighting while maintaining a focus on their own safety and their crew’s safety in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.”olson.wyatt@stripes.comTwitter: @WyattWOlson

BY CAITLIN DOORNBOS

Stars and Stripes

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — American troops in Japan are barred from trying a new “instant relaxation drink” because one of its ingredients is off-limits to U.S. service members, according to a Naval Criminal Investigative Service statement posted to Facebook on Wednesday.

Chill Out, a product of Coca-Cola Japan sold alongside soda and energy drinks in the coun-try, contains hemp seed extract, which the Department of Defense prohibits service members from consuming.

Hemp is a strain of the Cannabis sativa plant, the same plant from

which marijuana is harvested. It contains less than 0.3% concen-tration of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical that gives users the high associated with marijuana, according to the Fed-eral Drug Administration.

The 2018 Agriculture Improve-ment Act excluded hemp products from the definition of marijuana because 0.3% THC is considered too low to impart a psychoactive effect.

While legal in both the United States and Japan, consumption of hemp products, such as can-nabidiol, or CBD, by U.S. mili-tary members is prohibited by the DOD because they may cause false positive results in drug tests, according to a Feb. 26 DOD memorandum.

“It is not possible to differenti-ate between THC-derived from legal hemp products and illicit marijuana,” then-acting under-secretary of defense for personnel and readiness Matthew Donovan wrote in the memo. “The use of hemp products could effectively undermine the Department’s ability to identify illicit THC use.”

Chill Out is marketed by En-dian, a limited liability compa-ny with ownership stakes held by I-ne, a marketing firm, and Coca-Cola Japan. The beverage is available at the 7-Eleven con-venience store at Naval Air Fa-cility Atsugi, according to a post on the base Facebook page. It’s also been spotted in “at least one vending machine in the vicinity”

of the Yokosuka base, according to NCIS, as well as a 7-Eleven.

The only English on the 6.2-ounce silver can is the product’s name, making it easy for a U.S. service member to purchase without knowing its ingredients.

Aside from hemp oil, Chill Out also contains L-Theanine, hop ex-tract and gamma-aminobutyric acid, which the company on its website says, “supports relaxing time.”

L-Theanine is an amino acid found in tea and some mush-rooms, according to WebMD.com.

Although L-Theanine is used to improve mental function and re-lieve anxiety, mental impairment and stress, “there is no good sci-entific evidence to support these

uses,” the website states.Gamma-aminobutyric acid, or

GABA, is a chemical made in thebrain and is shown to be effectivefor relieving high blood pressureand motion sickness, according to WebMD, and some research shows it may relieve symptoms ofstress.

The companies say Chill Outis a “next-generation relaxationdrink,” according to an Aug. 5statement from Coca-Cola Japan.

“Information overload andstress are increasing these days,” the statement said. “Whatyou need is not ‘energy’ but‘relaxation.’ ”

doornbos.caitlin@stripes.comTwitter: @CaitlinDoornbos

MILITARY

SIGAR: US lost $19B in decade in Afghanistan

Marines, sailors home after helping quell Calif. wildfires

Troops in Japan warned not to try ‘instant relaxation drink’

ERIC LACLAIR/U.S. Marine Corps

A Marine assigned to the 7th Engineer Support Battalion conducts wildland firefighting operations with National Interagency Fire Center personnel near the Sierra National Forest in California last month .

‘ The Soldiers, Sailors and Marines learned and adapted quickly to wildland firefighting . ’

Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardsoncommander of U.S. Army North

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 8 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

BY JOSEPH DITZLERAND AYA ICHIHASHI

Stars and Stripes

TOKYO — A food-service worker at Kadena Air Base has tested positive for the coronavirus, the third case this month involving a base employee, the installation announced Wednesday.

Okinawa prefecture confirmed the re-port, but a public health official declined to provide further information.

The employee worked at the Kazoku Place restaurant inside Rocker Enlisted Club and contracted the virus from a fam-ily member who also tested positive, ac-cording to a Facebook post by Kadena.

Four close contacts of the employee were also quarantined, and the Rocker was closed for deep cleaning, the post said. The Rocker and Kazoku Place restaurant will reopen at 6 a.m. Thursday.

The employee complied with all stan-dard prevention measures “to include proper handwashing and mask wear while

at work,” according to Kadena. The base referred to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which states that no evidence exists to show people can get the virus by eating or handling food.

“An infected person can spread COVID-19 starting from 48 hours (or 2 days) be-fore the person has any symptoms or tests positive for COVID-19,” the Kadena post said. COVID-19 is the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

The infected employee “did not work the two days prior to symptom onset,” accord-ing to Kadena.

Two other base employees, both Japa-nese civilians, tested positive on Oct. 10 and 13. The first, a man in his 50s from Okinawa city, works at the base arts and crafts shop; the second, a man in his 40s from Naha city, works at the base Pizza Hut. Neither had contact with customers, the base said in earlier statements.

Kadena announced four other cases on Monday, all members of the same family

that arrived Oct. 3. They tested positive over the weekend in a test required by U.S. Forces Japan prior to exiting quarantine. The four had been isolated since their ar-rival in Japan, the base reported.

Okinawa prefecture reported one death and 37 new cases Wednesday, which brought the pandemic total to 3,013 cases, according to the public health official.

In southern Japan, Sasebo Naval Base on Wednesday announced it cleared three people of the virus, leaving the base with one active case.

The base commander, Capt. David Adams, on Oct. 7 reimposed tight travel re-strictions as four, and ultimately five, new cases appeared at Sasebo. He lifted those restrictions four days later, in time for his command to take advantage of the Colum-bus Day holiday.

USFJ now has about 20 active coronavi-rus cases at any one time, Command Chief Master Sgt. Richard Winegardner Jr. said during a Facebook Live question-and-an-

swer session with American Forces Net-work on Wednesday.

“We’re doing really, really well,” he saidfrom Yokota Air Base, USFJ headquartersin western Tokyo.

In response to questions, Winegardnersaid local conditions and mission require-ments typically dictate the restrictions im-posed by base commanders. For example,Navy personnel work in environments likeships and submarines where the virus may spread quickly, so they may see morestringent rules than Air Force maintainers working on open flight lines, he said.

“We have learned a lot of lessons alongthe way,” Winegardner said. “Some of them we learned the hard way. Some ofthem have come off the backs of the forceout here because we just didn’t know whatright looked like.”ditzler.joseph@stripes.comTwitter: @JosephDitzlerichihashi.aya@stripes.comTwitter: @AyaIchihashi

MILITARY

Kadena says another base worker has tested positive for coronavirus

BY PAUL SONNE

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The National Guard, already facing one of its busiest years, is prepping for election-related missions that include cybersecurity for local electoral authorities, ballot counting in at least one state and backup for police or if unrest erupts after the vote.

The preparations come as the United States heads into one of its most conten-tious presidential elections, which is taking place in the middle of a global pandemic and amid persistent suggestions by Presi-dent Donald Trump that he may dispute the results if he loses. Parts of the country have also been experiencing racial jus-tice protests and environmental threats ranging from wildfires to hurricanes, which have further stretched a Guard al-ready on the front lines responding to the pandemic.

The Guard’s domestic deployments this year under state authorities reached a peak of 86,367 forces in June, according to a spokeswoman for the National Guard, far larger than the approximately 50,000 guardsmen who deployed domestically to respond to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. There about 450,000 members of the Na-tional Guard across the country.

For the election, some Guard units are preparing to deploy under “state active duty” status, meaning they will answer to the governor of their state and use state funds. Some units could deploy outside their state after the election if a gover-nor requests help handling post-election unrest.

Federal law prohibits the deployment of armed troops to polling places during elec-tions, but National Guard units can do cer-tain missions on Election Day if they are deployed by governors using state funds, which means they would also be unarmed, according to Guard officials. During pri-maries earlier this year, for example, some states used their Guard units, in civilian attire, to help local election authorities struggling with a shortage of volunteers at the polls because of the pandemic.

The election also comes at a sensitive moment for the U.S. military, which has struggled to steer clear of the nation’s di-visive politics. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, em-

phasized in a recent interview with NPR that a disputed election would be handled “appropriately” by the U.S. courts and Congress and said that there would be “no role for the military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election. Zero.”

But governors could request Guard units from their own states and others to aid local law enforcement.

After the election, if faced with unrest, Trump theoretically could federalize the Guard and deploy them under the Insur-rection Act. Because the District of Colum-bia Guard is controlled by the president, he could also ask states to contribute their forces to the D.C. Guard and create a do-mestic military force answering to him in the nation’s capital. Trump did so in June, in response to protests over the police kill-ing of George Floyd, bringing in Guard units from 11 states to back up the D.C.

Guard and amassing active-duty troops outside the capital.

Nationwide, the National Guard has des-ignated contingency response units — one in Alabama and the other in Arizona — that are on alert to deploy rapidly to aug-ment forces in other states. The Guard said it had created the units as governors across the country continued to request support for law enforcement in efforts to control civil unrest this year.

Lt. Col. Timothy Alexander, a spokes-man for the Alabama National Guard, said the response team is “comprised of mili-tary police units that are specially trained to support law enforcement.”

Their duties will depend on the situation, he said, but “may include point and area security, manning traffic control points, directing foot traffic, providing security and escort for emergency personnel and

equipment, and transporting law enforce-ment personnel.”

The response team for the western partof the United States is composed of unitsfrom Arizona, while units from Alabamaare on alert for the eastern half of thecountry.

On the state level, the Guard is also pre-paring to ensure it can assist governors ifdeployed locally to help law enforcement.

“It has been an interesting year, andthese are interesting times, and we cer-tainly are planning for the just-in-casescenario for the possibility of civil distur-bances up to, during or after the election,”said Col. Kenneth Borchers, commanderof the 194th Wing of the Washington Air National Guard. “We have to; it would beimprudent not to.”

Borchers’s special warfare, cyber andintelligence wing assisted local law en-forcement in Seattle and elsewhere inthe state when civil unrest erupted afterFloyd’s killing. The unit, based south ofSeattle, includes guardsmen from big tech companies who focus on intelligence andcyber operations. But Borchers said the unit rose to the challenge after receivingspecial training.

His unit and others have had one of the busiest years on record.

“We deployed for food bank support forCOVID, contact tracing missions, unem-ployment validation, testing sites. We de-ployed in response to civil disturbancesin several metropolitan areas, and we also deployed to fight fires a few weeks ago,”Borchers said. “It has been a heck of a2020 for everybody.”

Governors across the nation activatedthousands of National Guard members tohelp control unrest that followed Floyd’s killing in May — deployments that came inparallel with duties the Guard was under-taking to help combat the coronavirus.

The chairman of the U.S. Election As-sistance Commission, Benjamin Hovland,said election officials across the countryare facing unprecedented challenges be-cause of the pandemic.

“The National Guard has proved to be agreat resource and a way to help a lot ofelection officials fill some of the gaps thatthey may have,” Hovland said, noting thatguardsmen also have provided an “extralayer of support” on cybersecurity in many states.

National Guard revs up for election, more

JOSEPH SIEMANDEL/U.S. National Guard

Washington National Guard Chief Warrant Officer 3 Teonie Curtis takes part in Cyber Shield 2020 at Camp Murray, Wash., last month . The National Guard is prepping for election-related missions that include cybersecurity for local electoral authorities.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 9Thursday, October 22, 2020

NATION

Trump tends to hiselectoral map, Biden eyes Obama boost

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is hopping from one must-win stop on the elector-al map to the next in the leadup to a final presidential debate that may be his last, best chance to alter the trajectory of the 2020 campaign.

As Democrat Joe Biden holes up for debate prep in advance of Thursday’s faceoff in Nashville, Tenn. , he’s hoping for a boost from former President Barack Obama, who will be holding his first in-person campaign event for Biden on Wednesday in Phila-delphia. Obama, who has become increasingly critical of Trump over the three-and-a-half years since he left office, will address a drive-in rally, where supporters will listen to him over the radio inside their cars.

It comes a day after Trump, trailing in polls in many battle-ground states, stopped in Penn-sylvania on Tuesday. Trump was bound for North Carolina on Wednesday as he delivers what his campaign sees as his closing message.

“This is an election between a Trump super recovery and a Biden depression,” the president said in Erie, P a. “You will have a depression the likes of which you have never seen.” He added: “If you want depression, doom and despair, vote for Sleepy Joe. And boredom.”

But the Republican president’s pitch that he should lead the re-building of an economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic has been overshadowed by a series of fights. In the last two days, he has attacked the nation’s lead-ing infectious disease expert and a venerable TV newsmagazine while suggesting that the country was tired of talking about a virus that has killed more than 221,000 people in the United States.

Before leaving the White House for Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Trump taped part of an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that ap-parently ended acrimoniously. On Twitter, the president declared his interview with Lesley Stahl to be “FAKE and BIASED,” and he threatened to release a White House edit of it before its Sunday airtime.

Also trailing in fundraising for campaign ads, Trump is increas-ingly relying on his signature campaign rallies to maximize turnout among his GOP base. His trip to Pennsylvania on Tuesday was one of what is expected to be several visits to the state in the next two weeks.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Trump said in Erie.

Erie County, which includes the aging industrial city in the

state’s northwest corner, went for Obama by 5 percentage points in 2012, but broke for Trump by 2 in 2016. That swing, fueled by Trump’s success with white, working-class, non-college-edu-cated voters, was replicated in small cities, towns and rural areas, and helped him overcome Hillary Clinton’s victories in the state’s big cities.

But Trump will probably need to run up the score by more this time around, as his prospects have slipped since 2016 in vote-rich suburban Philadelphia, where he underperformed by past Repub-lican measures. This raises the stakes for his campaign’s more aggressive outreach to new rural and small-town voters across the industrial north.

His aides worry that his oppo-nent is uniquely situated to pre-vent that, as Biden not only hails from Scranton, but has also built his political persona as a repre-sentative of the middle and work-ing classes.

Trump, who spoke for less than an hour, showed the crowd a video of various Biden com-ments on fracking in a bid to por-tray the Democrat as opposed to the process. The issue is critical in a state that is the second lead-ing producer of natural gas in the country. Biden’s actual position is that he would ban new gas and oil permits, including for fracking, on federal lands only. The vast majority of oil and gas does not come from federal lands.

Three weeks of wrangling over the debate format and structure appeared to have subsided after the Commission on Presidential Debates came out with proce-dures meant to reduce the chaot-ic interruptions that plagued the first Trump-Biden encounter last month.

This time, Trump and Biden will each have his microphone cut off while his rival delivers an opening two-minute answer to each of the six debate topics, the commission announced. The mute button won’t figure in the open discussion portion of the debate.

Trump was to have been joined in Erie by first lady Melania Trump, in what would have been her first public appearance since she and the president were sick-ened with COVID-19. But her chief of staff, Stephanie Grisham, said Tuesday that Mrs. Trump has a lingering cough and would not accompany the president.

As Trump was on the road, Biden was meeting at his lakeside home in Wilmington, Del. , with senior adviser Ron Klain, who is in charge of debate preparation. Also on hand was a group of aides that the campaign has purposely kept small to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus.

BY MARK SHERMAN

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — With Amy Coney Barrett expected to join the Supreme Court as early as next week, the court’s action in a Pennsylvania voting case has heightened fears among Demo-crats about the court being asked to decide a post-election dispute and with it, the winner of the White House.

The justices split 4-4 Monday over a Republican plea to undo a state court order and force elec-tions officials to ignore absentee ballots received after Election Day, Nov. 3. The tie vote left the Pennsylvania court order in ef-fect and allows mailed ballots to be counted if they are received by Nov. 6. Chief Justice John Roberts and his three liberal colleagues voted to leave the court order in place.

The four conservative mem-bers of the court who would have granted the GOP’s request are likely to be joined soon by Bar-rett. That’s a potential major-ity, even without Roberts, in any election-related dispute, whether from Pennsylvania or any other battleground state where mailed-in ballots or a recount fight could decide the winner.

“One more vote, provided by a hard-right, Trump-nominated justice, could be the difference between voting rights and voting suppression,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Tuesday.

President Donald Trump has

already signaled that one reason for Barrett’s speedy nomination, just eight days after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, was to have her confirmed and installed on the court in time for any elec-tion lawsuit that might reach the justices.

The last time that happened was in 2000, when the court ef-fectively decided the presidential election in favor of George W. Bush by a 5-4 vote.

If nothing else, the split vote Monday strongly suggested there is not likely to be the requisite five votes to upend a federal appeals court order that has blocked a six-day extension of the time to re-ceive and count absentee ballots in Wisconsin. That case is pend-ing at the Supreme Court.

The court’s conservatives, Roberts included, have regularly sided with state officials who ob-ject when a federal court relaxes election rules, even if the chang-es arise from the coronavirus pandemic.

At the same time, the Supreme Court generally won’t disturb state court rulings that are rooted in state law.

But civil rights lawyers and election law experts said the vote in the Pennsylvania case indi-cates that at least four conserva-tives may be willing to look at state court election-related deci-sions in a way that calls to mind Bush v. Gore.

Pennsylvania Republicans re-lied in part on an opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas and two other conservative justices in

Bush v. Gore to argue that the Su-preme Court should get involvedin the case because the state courthad improperly taken powers given by the U.S. Constitution to state lawmakers when it comes topresidential elections. The court ruled for Bush on other grounds,that ballots were being handleddifferently across the state in vio-lation of the Constitution’s guar-antee of equal protection.

“Based on Judge Barrett’s re-cord, there is every reason to be-lieve that she would have been a fifth vote in favor of the SupremeCourt overstepping its boundsand interfering with a non-fed-eral issue that would have jeopar-dized voter access,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executivedirector of the Lawyers’ Com-mittee for Civil Rights UnderLaw. The group opposes Barrett’sconfirmation.

The justices on Monday provid-ed no written explanation of theirvotes, so it is impossible to say ex-actly why Justices Samuel Alito,Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaughand Thomas would have grantedthe Republican request or whythe other half of the shorthanded court didn’t.

The Supreme Court has never cited Bush v. Gore in an opinionof the court, and in its unsigned majority opinion the court wrote, “Our consideration is limited tothe present circumstances.”

But two lawyers who workedfor Bush’s cause in 2000, Rob-erts and Kavanaugh, now sit on the court. And they soon could bejoined by a third, Barrett.

Democrats: Justices’ 4-4 tie in election case is ominous sign

MATT SLOCUM/AP

A worker processes mail-in ballots at the Bucks County Board of Elections office prior to the primary election in Doylestown, Pa.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 10 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

BY ELLIOT SPAGAT

Associated Press

SAN DIEGO — Court-ap-pointed lawyers said Tuesday that they have been unable to find parents of 545 children who were separated at the U.S. border with Mexico early in the Trump administration.

The children were separated between July 1, 2017, and June 26, 2018, when a federal judge in San Diego ordered that children in government custody be reunit-ed with their parents.

Children from that period are difficult to find because the gov-ernment had inadequate track-ing systems. Volunteers have searched for them and their parents by going door-to-door in Guatemala and Honduras.

More than 2,700 children were separated from their parents in June 2018 when U.S. District

Judge Dana Sabraw ordered an end to the practice under a “zero-tolerance” policy to crimi-nally prosecute every adult who entered the country illegally from Mexico. The administration sparked an international outcry when parents couldn’t find their children.

While those families were reunited under court order, au-thorities later discovered that up to 1,556 children were separated under the policy going back to the summer of 2017, including hundreds during an initial run at family separation in El Paso, Texas, from July to November 2017 that was not publicly dis-closed at the time.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued over the prac-tice, said a court-appointed steer-ing committee located parents of 485 children, up 47 from August. That leaves 545 still unaccounted

for among the 1,030 children for whom the steering committee had telephone numbers from U.S. authorities.

About two-thirds of parents of those 545 children are believed to be in their countries of origin, the ACLU said.

Volunteers have “engaged in time-consuming and arduous on-the-ground searches for parents in their respective countries of origin,” the ACLU said in a court filing. Those searches were sus-pended after the coronavirus outbreak but have resumed in a

limited way.The steering committee has

also promoted toll-free phone numbers in Spanish to reach families.

The judge has scheduled ahearing on Thursday to discuss status of reunification efforts.

BY MARCIA DUNN

Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A NASA spacecraft descended to an asteroid Tues-day and, dodging boulders the size of build-ings, momentarily touched the surface to collect a handful of cosmic rubble for re-turn to Earth.

It was a first for the United States — only Japan has scored asteroid samples.

“Touchdown declared,” a flight control-ler announced to cheers and applause. “Sampling is in progress.”

Confirmation came from the Osiris-Rex spacecraft as it made contact with the sur-face of the asteroid Bennu more than 200 million miles away. But it could be a week before scientists know how much, if much of anything, was grabbed and whether anoth-er try will be needed. If successful, Osiris-Rex will return the samples in 2023.

“I can’t believe we actually pulled this off,” said lead scientist Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. “The spacecraft did everything it was supposed to do.”

Osiris-Rex took 4 ½ hours to make its way down from its tight orbit around Bennu, fol-lowing commands sent well in advance by ground controllers near Denver.

Bennu’s gravity was too low for the space-craft to land — the asteroid is just 1,670 feet across. As a result, it had to reach out with its 11-foot robot arm and attempt to grab at least 2 ounces of Bennu.

Tuesday’s operation was considered the most harrowing part of the mission, which began with a launch from Cape Canaveral back in 2016.

A van-sized spacecraft with an Egyp-

tian-inspired name, Osiris-Rex aimed for a spot equivalent to a few parking spaces on Earth in the middle of the asteroid’s Nightingale Crater. After nearly two years orbiting the boulder-packed Bennu, the spacecraft found this location to have the biggest patch of particles small enough to be swallowed up.

The spacecraft was programmed to shoot out pressurized nitrogen gas to stir up the surface, then suck up any loose pebbles or dust, before backing away.

By the time flight controllers heard back from Osiris-Rex, the action already happened 18 ½ minutes earlier, the time it takes radio signals to travel each way be-tween Bennu and Earth.

“We’re going to be looking at a whole se-

ries of images as we descended down to the surface, made contact, fired that gas bottle, and I really want to know how that surface responded,“ Lauretta said. “We haven’t done this before, so this is new territory for us.”

Pictures taken during the operation will give team members a general idea of the amount of loot; they will put the spacecraft through a series of spins Saturday for a more accurate measure.

Osiris-Rex could make two more touch-and-go maneuvers if Tuesday’s sample comes up short. Regardless of how many tries it takes, the samples won’t return to Earth until 2023 to close out the $800-plus million quest. The sample capsule will parachute into the Utah desert.

Associated Press

MIAMI — Hurricane Epsilon, the 10th of this very busy Atlantic season, was moving toward Bermuda on Wednesday.

Epsilon is expected to make its closest approach to the island on Thursday night, and there is a risk of a direct impact, ac-cording to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

A tropical storm watch is in effect for Bermuda and residents have been urged to closely monitor the storm.

Large swells generated by Epsilon are already affecting Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the Leeward Islands, and are expected to cause life-threatening surf and rip current condi-tions along the coast of New England and Atlantic Canada during the next couple of days.

The Miami-based hurricane center said Epsilon had maximum sustained winds of 85 mph Wednesday morning. The storm was located about 450 miles east-south-east of Bermuda, and was moving north-west at 14 mph .

This year’s hurricane season has had so many storms that the Hurricane Cen-ter has turned to the Greek alphabet for storm names after running out of official names.

Epsilon also represents a record for the earliest 26th named storm, arriving more than a month before a storm on Nov. 22 in 2005, according to Colorado State Univer-sity hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.

NATION

Parents of 545 kids separated at border still can’t be found

Spacecraft grabs rubble from asteroid

10th hurricane of busy season moves toward Bermuda

WILFREDO LEE/AP

Children line up Feb. 19, 2019, to enter a tent at the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Fla. Lawyers say they still have not found the parents of 545 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.

NASA, GODDARD UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/AP

This undated image shows the Osiris-Rex spacecraft’s primary sample collection site on the asteroid Bennu. An outline of the spacecraft is placed at center to illustrate the scale of the site. Osiris-Rex collected rubble from the surface Tuesday, but how much it was able to grab won’t be known for about a week.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 11

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Negotia-tions on a huge COVID-19 relief bill have taken a modest step forward, though time is running out and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, President Donald Trump’s most powerful Senate ally, is pressing the White House not to move ahead.

McConnell told fellow Repub-licans that he has warned the White House not to divide Re-publicans by sealing a lopsided $2 trillion relief deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before the election — even as he publicly said he’d slate any such agree-ment for a vote.

Pelosi’s office said talks with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Tuesday were pro-ductive, but other veteran law-makers said there is still too much work to do and not enough time to do it to enact a relief bill by Election Day.

McConnell appears worried that an agreement between Pe-losi and Mnuchin would drive a wedge between Republicans, forcing them to choose whether to support a Pelosi-blessed deal with Trump that would violate conservative positions they’ve stuck with for months.

California

SACRAMENTO — California will let fans back in outdoor sta-diums for pro sporting events in counties with low coronavirus infection rates, but isn’t ready to allow Disneyland and other major theme parks to reopen, the state’s top health official said Tuesday.

San Francisco and neighbor-ing Alameda and Santa Clara are the only counties that meet the threshold for pro sports. Imme-diately after the announcement, however, officials in Santa Clara, home to the San Francisco 49ers, issued a statement saying they weren’t prepared to allow even a limited number of fans into Levi’s Stadium.

Major theme parks, on the other hand, strongly objected to the state’s restrictions, say-ing they could safely operate even with thousands of people in attendance.

As many as 14,000 people could attend Levi’s Stadium events under the state’s guidance, set-ting up the chance of devastating “superspreader” events, said Dr. Jeff Smith, Santa Clara County’s executive officer.

Louisiana

BATON ROUGE — Republi-can Louisiana lawmakers voted Tuesday to give themselves more authority to curb Gov. John Bel Edwards’ coronavirus restric-tions and emergency powers, under a deal brokered between House and Senate GOP lead-ers that ended a stalemate on the major issue of the special session.

After days of negotiations be-hind closed doors, the agreement was included in a bill by Cov-ington Republican Rep. Mark

Wright. The final language won Senate support Tuesday in a 23-13 vote, followed by House back-ing in a 54-30 vote.

The measure heads next to the governor’s desk, where Edwards could choose to veto it. He’s re-peatedly said he doesn’t support any attempts to lessen his emer-gency authority.

The House doesn’t have enough Republican members to override a gubernatorial veto. That raises questions about whether lawmak-ers will return home without a permanent law change to the gov-ernor’s emergency powers and legislative oversight — the major disagreement between GOP law-makers and the Democratic gov-ernor that prompted the special session.

North Carolina

CHARLOTTE — Health offi-cials in a North Carolina county said Tuesday evening they are in-vestigating at least 50 confirmed cases of COVID-19 connected to an event at a church, according to TV station WBTV.

Mecklenburg County urged all people who attended convoca-tion events at the United House of Prayer for All People on Oct. 10 and 11 to get tested, The Char-lotte Observer reported Monday. At the time, the county linked at least nine cases of COVID-19 to the weekend event.

Mecklenburg County Deputy Health Director Raynard Wash-ington said the number has near-ly tripled. Washington said the church made an effort to ensure masks were worn and that those attending practiced social dis-

tancing, but he said people didn’t always comply.

Nevada

CARSON CITY — Nevada’s rate of coronavirus infections is steadily rising again. But state of-ficials are reluctant to blame re-laxed guidelines and say there is no reason yet to consider stricter measures.

Gov. Steve Sisolak and state health officials pointed to nation-al and worldwide trends rather than the easing of state guide-lines as the cause of the spikes, and said adherence to prevention measures could curb the spread of the virus and prevent reimple-menting restrictions.

Nevada’s rate of infections has been increasing since Sisolak, a Democrat, relaxed restrictions on the size of public gatherings on Oct. 1. The White House Corona-virus Task Force has since redes-ignated the state as a “red zone,” after the number of new cases per week per 100,000 residents sur-passed 100.

In the state’s largest counties, the task force report recommend-ed that “both public and private gatherings should be as small as possible and optimally, not extend beyond immediate family.”

New Hampshire

CONCORD — The attorney general’s office has fined a New Hampshire restaurant where at least 18 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in an outbreak.

Fat Katz Food and Drink res-taurant has been fined $2,000 for violating emergency orders

related to the coronavirus after it moved a karaoke event inside. The Hudson restaurant told authori-ties that it moved the event inside after receiving noise complaints and due to colder weather.

In issuing the fine, the state in a letter to the restaurant said the decision to move the event inside after being told it wasn’t allowed indoors and allowing individuals to participate without bringing their own equipment not only vio-lated the state’s emergency order, but also was “reckless.”

The cases linked to Fat Katz include a person who went to the restaurant while aware of their COVID-19 diagnosis when they were supposed to be in isolation, and a second person who went there when they were knowingly supposed to be in quarantine.

Tennessee

MEMPHIS — Three employ-ees of a Tennessee tax service have been charged with filing over $1 million in false claims for coronavirus-related federal loans, federal prosecutors said.

Brandy Scaife, Janisha Jones and Sharika Carpenter have been indicted on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud, the U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said in a news release.

All three were employees of Better Days Tax Service in Mem-phis, prosecutors said. From April through June, they used false information on more than 400 applications seeking U.S. Small Business Administration loans made available to businesses that suffered losses from the COVID-19 pandemic, prosecutors allege.

The loans added up to about $1.1 million, prosecutors said.

Each defendant faces up to 30years in federal prison if convict-ed. Carpenter’s lawyer, Arthur Horne, said Tuesday that he wasgathering information about thecase but his client plans to fightthe charges.

Washington

SEATTLE — Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee will now require colleges and universities to pro-vide quarantine facilities for allstudents if they are exposed to COVID-19.

The governor on Tuesday is-sued more restrictions for higher education campuses as the Uni-versity of Washington strugglesto contain an outbreak among itsfraternities and sororities. There have been outbreaks in Whit-man County, home of WashingtonState University, as well.

Also Tuesday, state health offi-cials warned of an upcoming “fall surge” in coronavirus infections, noting that western Washing-ton counties are hitting near orabove previous peaks in the rateof infections.

The new higher education guidelines now require the col-leges to provide isolation and quarantine facilities for Greeksystem houses, communal off-campus homes, and students and workers who live on campus ifthey don’t have a place to go.

Colleges without dorms or resi-dential facilities must create aplan on how to address student and staff needs for isolation and quarantine in the event that they are exposed.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

VIRUS OUTBREAK ROUNDUP

McConnell still resistant as relief talks inch ahead

BEBETO MATTHEWS/AP

New York City Transit Interim President Sarah Feinberg, right, hands out pink masks to people on a subway to draw attention to Breast Cancer Awareness Month on Tuesday in New York.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 12 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

NATION

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced Wednes-day that it reached an $8.3 bil-lion settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma as a re-sult of criminal and civil inves-tigations by federal prosecutors into the company’s marketing of opioid painkillers.

Purdue Pharma agreed to plead guilty in federal court in New Jersey to three felony counts for defrauding the United States and violating the anti-kickback statute from 2009 to 2017 in what the Justice Department said was “the largest penalties ever lev-ied against a pharmaceutical manufacturer.”

Federal prosecutors said the company, which manufactured millions of opioid pills during the height of the epidemic, paid two doctors through its doctor speaker program and an electronic health records company to drive up pre-scriptions for its opioid products, including OxyContin.

“The kickback effectively put Purdue marketing department in the exam room with their thumb on the scale at precisely the moment doctors were making critical decisions about patient health,” District of Vermont U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan said at the Justice Department briefing.

The settlement does not in-clude jail time for top executives or the owners, the wealthy Sack-ler family. But the resolution does not mean any executives or the Sacklers are immune to potential future criminal charges, accord-ing to the Justice Department.

The $8.3 billion global settle-ment includes a criminal fine of $3.544 billion, criminal forfeiture of $2 billion and a civil settlement of $2.8 billion. The Sackler fam-ily separately agreed to pay $225 million in damages to resolve a civil False Claims Act case.

The $8 billion figure is largely symbolic — the bankrupt drug-maker is already indebted to states, communities and other creditors. The company is among several drugmakers and distribu-tors embroiled in litigation over the deaths and economic dev-astation inflicted by the opioid epidemic . Critics of the Sacklers and Purdue blame OxyContin for fueling the epidemic and have sought harsher penalties. The company and family still face scores of lawsuits .

A representative for the family denied that any members were in a management role during the time the company paid the doc-tors or software company — an assertion that has been disputed by state attorneys general and other civil plaintiffs.

Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Louis-ville police officer who shot Bre-onna Taylor after he was wounded by her boyfriend’s gunshot said she “didn’t deserve to die.”

Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly said Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical worker who was roused from her bed by police serv-ing a narcotics warrant, “didn’t do anything to deserve a death sentence.”

Mattingly spoke to ABC News and the Louisville Courier Jour-nal, his first media interviews on the shooting that sparked weeks of protests in the city. He said he and his fellow officers had gone

to Taylor’s apartment to serve a warrant in a drug case that tar-geted her ex-boyfriend, and had to defend themselves once they were fired upon.

“You want to do the right thing,” Mattingly said. “You want to be the one who is protecting, not up here looking to do any damage to anybody’s family. That’s not anybody’s desire that I’ve worked with.”

Mattingly and another offi-cer, Myles Cosgrove, fired into the apartment’s front entry after Taylor’s then-boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot Mattingly in the leg. Walker said he thought an intrud-er had come through the door.

Taylor was shot five times and died at the scene.

A grand jury last month chargeda third officer who also fired hisgun with endangering Taylor’sneighbors, but none of the three were charged in Taylor’s death .

Mattingly, 44, said the protestsand media reports that followedthe shooting unfairly comparedTaylor’s death to the slaying ofGeorge Floyd in Minnesota and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.

“It’s not a race thing like peo-ple wanna try to make it to be.It’s not,” he said. “This is not usgoing, hunting somebody down.This is not kneeling on a neck. It’s nothing like that.”

BY NIKKI WENTLING

Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — White em-ployees who applied for manage-ment positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs were pro-moted at twice the rate of Black workers, according to VA data re-leased last week.

Of the Black employees who ap-plied for promotions, 2.5% were selected in 2019 and 2020. White workers were selected at nearly twice that rate: 4.7% in 2019 and 4.4% so far in 2020. The data was obtained by the American Feder-ation of Government Employees, a union representing hundreds of

thousands of VA workers. AFGE and the VA have sparred

in recent months over the agency’s treatment of Black workers, and the union claims this latest data points to an underlying bias at the VA against Black employees.

“These troubling statistics … validate the complaints our mem-bers have shared regarding the systemic racism they face every day while simply trying to serve our nation’s veterans and war he-roes,” said Everett Kelley, the na-tional president of AFGE.

The VA didn’t deny the accu-racy of the data but argued that AFGE leaders were trying to dis-

tract from their own workplaceproblems. VA press secretaryChristina Noel referenced allega-tions against the union’s formerpresident, J. David Cox, sayinghe used racial slurs and sexuallyabused and harassed employees.

Cox was forced to resign in February. Union employees andmembers filed a lawsuit in Junethat accuses Kelley and other officials of shielding Cox from scrutiny.

“Unlike AFGE, VA does not tol-erate harassment or discrimina-tion in any form,” Noel said . wentling.nikki@stripes.comTwitter: @nikkiwentling

VA, union spar over race, promotion rates

Purdue Pharma pleads guilty in settlement

Officer: Taylor ‘didn’t deserve to die’

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 13Thursday, October 22, 2020

WORLD

Associated Press

LAGOS, Nigeria — Nigerian protesters demanding an end to police brutality defied a curfew as gunfire rang out where they were setting up a blockade Wednesday, a day after shots were fired into a crowd of demonstrators singing the country’s national anthem. That disturbing turn drew global outrage.

It’s not clear if any protesters were killed in Tuesday night’s shooting at the Lekki toll plaza in the West African country’s sprawling commercial capital. Lagos’ governor said more than 20 were injured but no one was killed, but Amnesty International

had earlier said there were fatali-ties and that it had “credible but disturbing evidence” that secu-rity forces were responsible.

Gunfire reverberated across Lagos on Wednesday, including at the Lekki toll plaza, where young demonstrators were rally-ing again despite an order for ev-eryone to stay off the streets .

Police fired tear gas at one point, and smoke could be seen billowing from several areas in the city’s center. Two private TV stations were forced off the air at least temporarily as their offices were burned.

Demonstrations and gunfire were also reported in several

other Nigerian cities, includingthe capital city, Abuja.

Young people have taken to the streets for more than two weeksafter anger over heavy-handedpolicing flared in response to avideo of a man being beaten, ap-parently by officers with the Spe-cial Anti-Robbery Squad, knownas SARS.

In response to the #EndSARS movement, the government an-nounced it would disband the unit .But that has failed to satisfy dem-onstrators, who are now demand-ing more widespread reforms to end human rights abuses commit-ted by security forces and perva-sive government corruption.

Gunfire erupts as Nigerians protest

Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 11 women were trampled to death when a stampede broke out Wednesday among thousands of Afghans waiting in a soccer stadium to get visas to leave the country, officials said.

Attaullah Khogyani, the

spokesman for the governor of the eastern Nangarhar province, said another 13 people, mostly women, were injured at the stadi-um, where they were trying to get visas to enter neighboring Paki-stan. He said most of those who died were elderly people from across Afghanistan.

Separately, at least 36 Afghan

police were killed in an ambush by Taliban militants in northern Afghanistan, officials said.

It was the deadliest attack since the Taliban and the Afghan government began holding long-delayed peace talks last month, part of a process launched under a deal signed between the Unit-ed States and the insurgents in

February. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah

Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, speaking to Parliament, asked “why are the Taliban kill-ing Afghans?“

He said the Taliban still believe in a “false narrative of conquest“

following a spate of recent attacks,especially in Helmand province.

The Pakistani Consulate inNangarhar was closed for almosteight months due to the corona-virus pandemic. Anticipating a large crowd, officials decided to use the stadium and assigned 320staffers to help manage the pro-cess, Khogyani said.

Stampede kills 11 Afghans seeking visas to Pakistan

SUNDAY ALAMBA/AP

Police officers patrol near the Lekki toll gate in Lagos, Nigeria, on Wednesday .

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

mental officials delayed enforce-ment after a lawsuit was brought by a plastic bag manufacturer and convenience store owners. A judge upheld key parts of the law this summer.

Backyard camera shows illegal entry into US

VT DERBY — The Border Patrol was investigat-

ing after a home security camera on a man’s property on the U.S.-Canadian border recorded a min-ivan illegally entering Vermont from Quebec.

The video showed three men trying unsuccessfully to move a granite block that marks the border in the backyard of cam-era owner Alain De La Bruere, of Derby.

De La Bruere told MyNBC5.com that most of the blocks are fixed in place, but the men man-aged to move one of the blocks at the edge of his yard and drive into the United States. The car was later found abandoned in a Walmart parking lot in Derby.

Teacher reports break-in at students’ home

CA SACRAMENTO — A California teacher

alerted police to a break-in at a home where her students were participating in an online class.

A man entered the home in

Galt through a window and ran through the house and then out a back door before going over a fence, KOVR-TV reported .

Teacher Jennifer Petersen real-ized something was wrong when the teenagers did not log off at the end of the lesson .

An audio recording captured the students screaming for help after seeing the man in the house.

Petersen called police and stayed online until authorities ar-rived at the home.

No arrests were reported by police.

Police: Man assaulted K-9, struck patrol car

DE GEORGETOWN — A Delaware man was ac-

cused of assaulting a police K-9 and striking a patrol car with his vehicle after troopers attempted to get him to stop his car.

Troopers attempted the traffic stop on suspicion that Dwayne

Wiltbank Jr., 37, was driving under the influence, Delaware State Po-lice said in a news release.

Officials said he failed to stop and a chase ensued. During that pursuit, authorities said Wiltbank intentionally struck a marked car head on and then reversed his car into another patrol car.

Troopers then deployed the K-9 in an attempt to arrest Wilt-bank. “It was unsuccessful after he began assaulting the dog,” the release said.

Wiltbank was arrested after troopers got into the passenger side of his vehicle and used a stun gun on him.

Jail time, $15K fine for man in deer killing

NV RENO — A 22-year-old Utah man was sen-

tenced to 20 days in jail and fined $15,000 nearly four years after he removed the antlers from a mule deer he illegally shot in southern

Nevada and left behind the rest ofthe animal.

Brayden Norton of Washington,Utah, was arrested in May 2019 after new information developedin the killing of the deer near Caliente in November 2016, Ne-vada Department of Wildlife of-ficials said .

Norton pleaded guilty in Lin-coln County to unlawful posses-sion of big game and wastingedible portions of a deer.

In addition to the fine, he must complete 200 hours of communityservice and 12 months probation.

Police find more than 200 animals in home

WA SEATTLE — Authori-ties have a person in

custody after finding more than200 animals in a West Seattle home and many others dead in an ongo-ing animal cruelty investigation.

KOMO-TV reported the SeattlePolice Department and SeattleAnimal Shelter found 200 animalsinside a home, with many dead animals found in a second home on the property.

Authorities said dogs, rabbits,guinea pigs and chinchillas in thehome were moved to the SeattleAnimal Shelter for evaluation and care.

Investigators are working to de-termine the exact amount of ani-mals found.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

From wire reports

AMERICAN ROUNDUPAgency: Flying squirrels illegally shipped to Asia

FL TALLAHASSEE — Flying squirrels were

being trapped in Florida, driven to Chicago and shipped to South Korea, Florida wildlife officials said while announcing charges against seven people they say ran an illegal wildlife trafficking operation.

Poachers captured as many as 3,600 flying squirrels over a three-year period. They sold the squirrels to a licensed wildlife dealer who claimed they were bred in captivity , the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Com-mission said . Flying squirrels are a protected species.

The seven people charged face a total of 25 felonies, including racketeering, money laundering and scheming to defraud.

Man accused of biting off nose of another man

IA DUBUQUE — A Dubuque man faces charges after

police say he bit off the nose of another man during a fight.

Blayre Ward, 24, of Dubuque was arrested on suspicion of will-ful injury, assault causing injury, harassment and other counts, the Telegraph Herald reported.

Police documents said Ward and another man fought with Scott Plumley, 44, of Dubuque and that Ward bit Plumley’s nose, “biting the majority of it off.” Plumley was taken by ambulance to a local hospital and later trans-ported to an Iowa City hospital for specialized surgery to recon-struct his nose.

Rare white sea turtle found on beach

SC KIAWAH ISLAND — Volunteers check-

ing sea turtle nests on a South Carolina beach came upon a rare sight: a white sea turtle hatchling crawling across the sand.

The town of Kiawah Island posted on its Facebook page that the Kiawah Island Turtle Patrol found a lone white baby sea turtle . Photos show a tiny turtle that’s a creamy white color rather than the more typical gray or green of a sea turtle.

The Olive Ridley Project, a sea turtle conservation group, said sea turtles with the genetic condi-tion called leucism typically have a hard time surviving because of a lack of camouflage.

Plastic bag ban starts after months of delay

NY ALBANY — New York’s long-delayed

ban on single-use plastic bags went into effect this week.

The state law bans supermar-kets, department stores and other types of businesses from distrib-uting the thin plastic bags that have been clogging up landfills, getting tangled in trees and ac-cumulating in lakes and seas. Single-use paper bags are still allowed, but counties have the op-tion of imposing a 5 cent fee.

The law was supposed to go into effect March 1, but state environ-

Follow the tentacled roadDylan Kassner, 5, rides his bike on the newly painted Haulover Beach Park Skate Park and Pump Track in Miami Beach, Fla. The mural by artist Rey Jaffet resembles octopus tentacles, and was commissioned by “SkateSafe,” a program of the KiDZ Neuroscience Center at the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, University of Miami Health System.

The approximate worth of two Australian lace mon-itor lizards that were recovered after being stolen last year. The Long Beach, Calif., Police Department said that the lizards were stolen from JTK Reptiles in Long Beach in November, The Los Angeles Times

reported. Police tracked the lizards, which can grow to be more than 6 feet long, to a Panorama City house. Jose Luis Macias Jr., 30, and Kassandra Marie Duenas, 27, were arrested and charged with second-degree robbery. Department spokes-man Brandon Fahey declined to say how detectives found the reptiles.

THE CENSUS

$75K

WILFREDO LEE/AP

Thursday, October 22, 2020 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 15

OPINIONMax D. Lederer Jr., Publisher

Lt. Col. Marci Hoffman, Europe commanderLt. Col. Richard McClintic, Pacific commander Caroline E. Miller, Europe Business Operations

EDITORIALTerry Leonard, Editor

leonard.terry@stripes.com

Robert H. Reid, Senior Managing Editorreid.robert@stripes.com

Tina Croley, Managing Editor for Contentcroley.tina@stripes.com

Sean Moores, Managing Editor for Presentationmoores.sean@stripes.com

Joe Gromelski, Managing Editor for Digitalgromelski.joe@stripes.com

BUREAU STAFFEurope/MideastErik Slavin, Europe & Mideast Bureau Chiefslavin.erik@stripes.com+49(0)631.3615.9350; DSN (314)583.9350

PacificAaron Kidd, Pacific Bureau Chiefkidd.aaron@stripes.com +81.42.552.2511 ext. 88380; DSN (315)227.7380

WashingtonJoseph Cacchioli, Washington Bureau Chiefcacchioli.joseph@stripes.com(+1)(202)886-0033 Brian Bowers, Assistant Managing Editor, Newsbowers.brian@stripes.com

CIRCULATIONMideastRobert Reismann, Mideast Circulation Manager robert.w.reismann.naf@mail.milxsscirculation@stripes.comDSN (314)583-9111

EuropeKaren Lewis, Community Engagement Managerlewis.karen@stripes.commemberservices@stripes.com+49(0)631.3615.9090; DSN (314)583.9090

PacificMari Mori, customerhelp@stripes.com+81-3 6385.3171; DSN (315)227.7333

CONTACT USWashingtontel: (+1)202.886.0003 633 3rd St. NW, Suite 116, Washington, DC 20001-3050

Reader lettersletters@stripes.com

Additional contactsstripes.com/contactus

OMBUDSMANErnie Gates

The Stars and Stripes ombudsman protects the free flow of news and information, reporting any attempts by the

military or other authorities to undermine the newspaper’s independence. The ombudsman also responds to concerns and questions from readers, and monitors coverage for fair-ness, accuracy, timeliness and balance. The ombudsman welcomes comments from readers, and can be contacted

by email at ombudsman@stripes.com, or by phone at 202.886.0003.

Stars and Stripes (USPS 0417900) is published week-days (except Dec. 25 and Jan. 1) for 50 cents Monday through Thursday and for $1 on Friday by Pacific Stars and Stripes, Unit 45002, APO AP 96301-5002. Periodicals postage paid at San Francisco, CA, Postmaster: Send address changes to Pacific Stars and Stripes, Unit 45002, APO AP 96301-5002.

This newspaper is authorized by the Department of Defense for members of the military services overseas. However, the contents of Stars and Stripes are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government. As a DOD newspaper, Stars and Stripes may be distributed through official chan-nels and use appropriated funds for distribution to remote locations where overseas DOD personnel are located.

The appearance of advertising in this publication does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense or Stars and Stripes of the products or services advertised. Products or services advertised shall be made available for purchase, use or patronage without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, physical handicap, political affiliation or any other nonmerit factor of the purchaser, user or patron.

© Stars and Stripes 2020

stripes.com

BY KATHLEEN PARKER

Washington Post Writers Group

WASHINGTON

Court-packing is suddenly all the rage these days, what with noth-ing else zooming around in the zeitgeist.

But, first, a glossary of terms. Court-packing does not mean that Republicans are getting to pick too many Supreme Court justices. What court-packing means, at least as Democrats are discussing it in legal circles, is expanding the number of justices by some arbitrary number in order to depoliticize the court and make its com-position more balanced. Theoretically.

What it really means is that Democrats want to pack the court in the expectation that a liberal-dominated Supreme Court will operate as all liberal-dominated courts have — as a super-legislator ful-filling liberal policy dreams that can’t get passed democratically. This was the same reason Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court in the 1930s: The Supreme Court was blocking some elements of the New Deal, and he wanted to add more justices in hope of securing approval. It’s worth remembering that this failed plan was the worst stain on his presidency — until his internment of Japanese Americans in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

Democrats are still aggrieved that Mer-rick Garland, nominated by President Barack Obama in 2016, didn’t receive so much as a hearing by the Republican-con-trolled Senate. This, too, is understandable, if not as relevant as one might think.

My own view at the time was that Gar-land, who wasn’t a hardcore lefty and

had some appeal to centrist Republicans, should have at least been shown the cour-tesy of a hearing. But there’s no constitu-tional requirement that any president’s nominee be considered — and hearings, courtesy or otherwise, are not required. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was well within his powers to ensure that the Garland pick went nowhere.

Wait, wait, I know. Yes, of course, it’s hypocritical for Republicans to argue then that the next president should choose Jus-tice Antonin Scalia’s replacement and to now argue the impending election doesn’t matter. It is an old-fashioned power grab, no different than Democrats would surely orchestrate were circumstances reversed. So it goes in the land of the free and the home of majority rule.

But here’s the distinction with an impor-tant difference: What matters more than good intentions, more than politics, more than any president, is public perception of the stability of the court and its position-ing above politics. This is why the justices wear black robes; it isn’t supposed to mat-ter who they are. They’re all alike in their remove from the fray. A rush by one party would further undermine what is already in danger of looking like just another branch of government riven by politics. Adding members to the high bench would create an even more politicized judiciary and further diminish public trust in our institutions.

Both parties bear responsibility for this trend. Its roots lie with the Democrats’ rejection in 1987 of Robert Bork to the high court in a viciously partisan melee. Ever since, not even grudging respect has softened the contempt and disdain each

party directs toward the other’s nominee,though mostly we’re talking about Repub-lican nominees. The conservative-leaningmajority, assuming Amy Coney Barrett’sconfirmation, has left Democrats plotting ways to disrupt the carefully minded dis-tance between the judiciary and the othertwo branches of government.

Joe Biden understands all of this and hasconsistently spoken out against packing thecourt, calling it in 1983 a “bonehead idea”and warning last year that doing so woulddestroy “any credibility the court has atall.” But recently he has begun showing signs of coyness as pressures come to bear from liberal commentators and at least 17progressive groups pushing for it.

The question now is whether Biden will stick to his view if he wins or give in to thegravitational pull of a younger generationof Democrats who want a liberal court, byhook, crook or wrecking ball. That tug willbe greater if the Democrats win the WhiteHouse and the Senate. During recent pub-lic appearances, Biden has refused to saywhere he stands, observing correctly thatno matter what he says, his answer wouldbecome the focus of the campaign’s finaldays.

The best argument against adding morejustices is: Where does it stop? If Democrats add three more justices, then Republicanswill add three — or however many — andso on. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who said last year everything is on the table, once told a joke about a future grandchild ask-ing him, “Granddad, why do we have 151people on the Supreme Court?”

It’s a funny line, but the more seriousconsequences of messing with the land’shighest court aren’t amusing in the least.

BY RAYMOND MASON, JACK KLIMP, KALETH O. WRIGHT AND CARI THOMAS

Special to Stars and Stripes

By now, we’re all too familiar with the devastating impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic since it came to our shores in mid-

March: businesses closing by the thou-sands, workers losing jobs by the millions, and more American lives lost than were caused by World War I and the Vietnam War combined. America’s military fami-lies have not been immune. Even for those military families who may have escaped direct harm from the pandemic, it has still caused significant disruption to their daily lives: by pushing back long-planned permanent change of station (PCS) moves, throwing their children’s academic futures into disarray, and putting promotions, weddings, retirements and other life mile-stones on hold.

But all of the attention justifiably paid to the pandemic risks obscuring another sig-nificant threat to military families: the in-credible power of hurricanes, fires, floods and other natural disasters. Case in point: Just weeks ago, two storms simultaneously made landfall along the Gulf Coast for the first time in a century. In total, 10 named hurricanes have already hit the continen-tal United States, which has never hap-pened before in one year. And the official 2020 “Hurricane Season,” which ends Nov. 30, is still at a dangerous point — even as California struggles to contain dangerous wildfires and the Midwest continues to clean up from this summer’s devastating line of tornadoes.

As federal and state resources are stretched to the breaking point by COVID-19, natural disasters have the potential to

be costlier and more dangerous than ever this year. And in some ways, military fami-lies are more at risk for these impacts than the average American, given where many military bases are located. With this in mind, it is more important than ever that military families prepare for natural di-sasters ahead of time. Whether the threat is hurricanes in the Southeast or wildfires out West, taking proper precautions now and heeding official guidance can save time, money and most importantly, lives.

However, we all recognize that some-times all the planning in the world can’t prepare us for what Mother Nature has in store. Thankfully, service members and their families in need of emergency finan-cial assistance have options. America’s four Military Aid Societies — Army Emer-gency Relief, Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, Air Force Aid Society and Coast Guard Mutual Assistance — are set up to provide grants and zero-interest loans to offset costs associated with preparation, evacuation and recovery costs caused by natural disasters.

These emergency dollars — which can often be accessed in as little as 48 hours — can help pay for fuel, clothing, hotel and other urgent expenses. Today, Coast Guard Mutual Assistance is working to help the more than 1,000 Coast Guard fam-ilies that were hit by Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Sally this summer — including the young family of a junior Coast Guard member, currently deployed to Bahrain, whose Louisiana home was completely de-stroyed. Given that water and power will likely not return for weeks or months, they are among the many still in desperate need of help.

Each year, as the familiar patterns of nat-ural disasters wreak havoc across the na-

tion, the relief societies we lead spring intoaction to help America’s military families. In 2019, Army Emergency Relief provided more than 5,000 soldiers with roughly $9million in natural disaster-related assis-tance. When Hurricane Michael hit theFlorida Panhandle in 2018, Air Force AidSociety provided a total of $6.5 million inemergency grants to nearly 5,000 airmenand their families — the largest single re-lief effort the organization had ever madein 78 years of service. Going back to 2005,when hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma hit the Gulf Coast, Navy-Marine Corps Re-lief Society helped almost 6,000 familieswith about $2.6 million in post-disaster recovery assistance. As the Coast Guard supported the widespread rescue efforts ofthese hard-hit communities, Coast GuardMutual Assistance distributed $3 millionin direct aid to the families of these help-ers affected by the storms.

Every time any of us turn on the TV and see footage of another natural disaster, weshudder. Each natural disaster is a tragedy for those who experience it, and many lives are never the same after the fact. There-fore, we strongly encourage all of Ameri-ca’s service members to take caution andprepare now, especially in these unprec-edented times. However, please also re-member that there are many resources available should a hurricane, fire or floodprove too great for any individual family tocope with it alone. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.Retired Lt. Gen. Raymond Mason is director of Army Emergency Relief. Retired Lt. Gen. Jack Klimp is CEO of Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society. R etired Chief Master Sgt. of the Air Force Kaleth O. Wright is CEO of Air Force Aid Society. Retired Rear Adm. Cari Thomas is CEO of Coast Guard Mutual Assistance.

Packing the court would destroy it

Troops have key allies when natural disasters strike

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 16 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 17

From wire reports

An altered photo of rappers Ice Cube and 50 Cent in hats that appear to show support for President Donald Trump circulated widely on social media Tuesday, fueled in part by a tweet by Eric Trump.

“Two great, coura-geous Americans,” Trump’s son tweeted. He removed the tweet with a photo of the two rappers in hats saying “Trump 2020” after being called out by Ice Cube on Twitter.

In the original photo, both entertainers were wearing baseball caps with sports logos. Ice Cube’s hat says “Big3,” a refer-ence to a 3-on-3 basketball league he co-founded, and 50 Cent wears one with the New York Yankees logo. Ice Cube shared the original photo on his Twitter account July 6 with a birthday message to 50 Cent.

“Happy birthday to the homie #@50cent,” he tweeted with the photo.

The manipulated image was shared thousands of times on Twitter and Face-book since it began gaining attention on Monday.

Ice Cube, whose real name is O’Shea Jackson, has come under fire for appearing to work with the Trump administration on his “Contract with Black America,” which

calls for a new dynamic for how the coun-try is run to address racial issues. In a re-cent interview with CNN, he said both the Trump campaign and Democratic presi-dential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign

reached out to him about his contract.

“One campaign said ‘we love what you have but let’s really dig into it after the election,’ and one campaign said we love what you have, ‘do you mind talking to us about it’ and that’s what I did,” he said on CNN. “The

Trump campaign came to me and asked me to explain to them some of the Contract with Black America.”

Ice Cube clarified that he has not en-dorsed either campaign.

“Whoever is in power I am going to work with,” he said on CNN.

On Monday, 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III, took to Insta-gram to say “Vote for Trump.”

Director Daldry exits ‘Wicked’ film adaptation

The long-gestating film adaptation of the Broadway hit “Wicked” has hit another snag. Director Stephen Daldry is exiting

Thursday, October 22, 2020

FACES

BY DAN GELSTON

Associated Press

Stone Gossard made serious prom-ises this campaign season.

Pearl Jam fans who answered FaceTime calls from the rhythm guitarist got something extra for

taking a vote-by-mail pledge — the latest offering from the band in a career full of activism and advocacy for political causes.

Gossard offered free tickets to the next Pearl Jam show in that person’s city.

“They were really happy when I told them I’d get them into the show,” Gossard, 54, said with a laugh.

The band postponed its 2020 tour that was set to promote its latest album, “Giga-ton,” and it just released the single “Get It Back” on streaming services. There are tentative start dates for a 2021 tour that in-cludes a European leg, but any true kickoff for a band rocking into its fourth decade still remains unknown in the pandemic.

“We’re mostly just thankful that we can actually stop for a year or two and every-thing’s going to be OK,” Gossard said. “For the majority of people out there, that reality is not the same. We’re going back to tour-ing. We’re going back to making records; we’re going to play ‘Gigaton’ live. We’re going to make more records and eat club sandwiches on the road. We just want to do that when it makes sense. It might still be a little bit of time.”

Gossard and Pearl Jam lead guitarist

Mike McCready told The Associated Press on a recent Zoom that tour rehearsals off the band’s first studio album in seven years were completed.

“We put the record out a while ago and then just kind of went, OK, now what do we do?” McCready said. “We’re going to keep going. we’re going to keep moving forward, hopefully.”

The band, which signs up fans for a vot-ing pledge by texting a five-digit number, hoped the tour would wind through swing states like Pennsylvania closer to the Nov. 3 election where they could push from their stage their PJ Votes campaign — vote by mail, recruit three friends and don’t wait.

Frontman Eddie Vedder posted step-by-step photos on his Instagram page on how to vote by mail. Vedder has long been a critic of President Donald Trump, cursing him out during shows and on “Gigaton.”

“We definitely have grown to be more

active, for sure, and it’s become part of our identity,” Gossard said. “Everybody in the band plays a role in it at this point, for sure. We feed off each other. When one of us is successful in terms of raising awareness or generosity and really doing something that’s really helpful, it really inspires all of us to continue that tradition and support that across the band.”

Pearl Jam played its first show 30 years ago on October 22, 1990, and the hiatus crimped an anniversary celebration.

Pearl Jam plans to satiate fans with the release Thursday of an April 29, 2016, show from Philadelphia when it played for only the second time its debut album, “Ten,” from beginning to end on a night a banner was raised to the rafters celebrat-ing 10 South Philadelphia sellouts.

The stream is available Thursday for the newly mixed 32-song, three-hour-set avail-able on nugs.net for $14.99, with a portion

of each ticket going to support the work ofPearl Jam’s Vitalogy Foundation.

McCready and Gossard said Philadel-phia has long been the home of Pearl Jam’s most fervent supporters.

“The level of engagement we get from our fans there is kind of unprecedented,”Gossard said. “To talk to folks that took the pledge and are really into it and really stra-tegic about their own votes and how they’redoing it and why they’re doing it has beeninspiring.”

The band targeted Pennsylvania becausethe battleground state plays a central rolein the contest between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Gossard says his campaign promise of afew free tickets will be kept — as long their fans take the pledge.

“We want to make sure that everybody participates, really,” he said. “I’m hopingfor a shift in the national direction.”

50 Cent Ice Cube

Altered photo shows Ice Cube, 50 Cent in ‘Trump 2020’ hats

They’re still alivePearl Jam parks tour bus, but band remains political

Danny Clinch

Pearl Jam, from left: Matt Cameron, Jeff Ahment, Mike McCready, Eddie Vedder and Stone Gossard. The band is unable to tour during the global pandemic, but that’s not stopping them from registering voters ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election.

the project, a studio representative con-firmed Tuesday.

The industry trade website Deadline first reported the news.

The “Billy Elliot” director has been as-sociated with the adaptation since 2012. Writer Winnie Holzman, who wrote the musical, wrote the script with “Wicked” composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz. At one point, the film was supposed to hit theaters in Dec. 2019.

Universal Pictures this year removed “Wicked” from its release schedule. It was last slated for a Dec. 22, 2021, theatrical launch.

No cast has been officially announced.In addition to directing the stage and

movie versions of “Billy Elliot,” Daldry’s Broadway credits include “An Inspector Calls,” “Skylight” and he just got a Tony Award nomination for “The Inheritance.” He has won two Tonys.

‘Gimme Some Lovin’ rock star Spencer Davis dead at 81

Spencer Davis, a British guitarist and bandleader whose eponymous rock group had 1960s hits including “Gimme Some Lovin’ ” and “I’m a Man,” has died at 81.

Davis’ agent, Bob Birk, said Tuesday that he died in a hospital while being treated for pneumonia. He didn’t give a location, but

British media reported that Davis lived in California.

Influenced by the burgeoning British blues and skiffle scenes, he formed the Spencer Davis Group in 1963, with a teen-age Steve Winwood on keyboards and gui-tar, his brother Muff Winwood on bass andPete York on drums.

With Steve Winwood as lead vocalist, theband had two No. 1 U.K. singles — “Keepon Running” in 1965 and “Somebody HelpMe” in 1966 — and seven British top 40hits before Steve Winwood’s departure in1967.

Other news� Tom Petty’s peers and admirers will

celebrate what would’ve been the rockicon’s 70th birthday with a virtual festival Friday. Set to stream on Petty’s websiteand on Amazon Music’s Twitch channel,“Tom Petty’s 70th Birthday Bash” willfeature performances and appearances by Stevie Nicks, Beck, Adam Sandler, BrandiCarlile, Chris Stapleton, Eddie Vedder,the Foo Fighters, Jackson Browne, Margo Price and Post Malone, among many oth-ers. Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench,both of Petty’s long-running band theHeartbreakers, are set to perform as well.The show comes three years after Petty’s death from an accidental overdose in 2017.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 18 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 19

BY MICHAEL MAROT

Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana wanted its next coach to take the franchise in a new direction.

The Pacers were seeking some-one who could communicate with today’s players, who was open to a new offensive philosophy and who could win some postseason games.

On Tuesday, president of basketball operations Kevin Pritchard found his man in To-ronto as-sistant Nate Bjorkgren.

“Nate is the right coach for us at the right time,” Pritchard said in a statement released by the team. “He comes from a winning background, has experienced championship suc-cess, is innovative and his com-munication skills along with his positivity are tremendous.”

Terms were not immediately available though several reports said the 45-year-old Bjorkgren agreed to a multiyear deal.

He comes to Indiana after spending two seasons as an as-sistant on Nick Nurse’s staff in Toronto. There, Bjorkgren helped the Raptors capture their first NBA championship in 2018-19 and was part of a team that earned the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed each of the past two seasons.

He also won a G-League title while working for Nurse in 2010-11 with the Iowa Energy.

And though this will be Bjorkgren’s first head coaching job in the NBA, he went 126-74 in

four seasons as a G-League head coach with the Dakota Wizards, Santa Cruz Warriors, Energy andBakersfield Jam.

Bjorkgren was expected to beintroduced Wednesday on a Zoomcall.

“This is something I have pre-pared for during my career,”Bjorkgren said in a statement,thanking those involved in the selection process. “I also want tothank Nick Nurse for giving me my first professional coaching job 14 years ago. I’m looking for-ward to working with this greatteam to achieve our goal as NBAchampions.”

Just winning some postseasongames would be a start.

Despite making five straightplayoff appearances, the Pacershaven’t won a series since defeat-ing Washington 4-2 in the 2014 Eastern Conference semifinals. Since then, Indy is 8-20 in theplayoffs and has endured three first-round sweeps the past fourseasons — the franchise’s onlyfour-game sweeps since joiningthe NBA in 1976.

Bjorkgren replaces Nate Mc-Millan, who was fired Aug. 26just two weeks after agreeing to a contract extension through the2021-22 season. In four seasonswith the team, McMillan went183-136, producing the fourth-highest victory total in franchisehistory. But he was just 3-16 inthe postseason.

Bjorkgren, an Iowa native whoplayed college basketball at South Dakota, left the G-League in 2015 to join Phoenix as player develop-ment coordinator. He spent twoseasons on the Suns staff beforerejoining Nurse in Toronto.

“We all look forward to a long,successful partnership in help-ing the Pacers move forward,”Pritchard said.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

SCOREBOARD/NBA

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

Sports on AFN

College football

ScheduleThursday’s game

SOUTHArkansas St. (3-2) at Appalachian St.

(2-1)Friday’s games

SOUTHJacksonville St. (2-1) at FIU (0-2)Tulsa (1-1) at South Florida (1-4)Louisiana-Lafayette (3-1) at UAB (4-1)

MIDWESTSE Missouri at S. Illinois, ppd.Illinois at Wisconsin

Saturday’s gamesEAST

Mercer (0-1) at Army (5-1)FAU (1-0) at Marshall (4-0)Houston (1-1) at Navy (3-2)Notre Dame (4-0) at Pittsburgh (3-3)Georgia Tech (2-3) at Boston College

(3-2)SOUTH

NC State (4-1) at North Carolina (3-1)Georgia Southern (3-1) at Coastal Car-

olina (4-0)Syracuse (1-4) at Clemson (5-0)Auburn (2-2) at Mississippi (1-3)Temple (1-1) at Memphis (2-1)Florida St. (2-3) at Louisville (1-4)UTEP (3-2) at Charlotte (1-2)Missouri (1-2) at Florida (2-1), ppd.Georgia (3-1) at Kentucky (2-2), ppd.Southern Miss. (1-3) at Liberty (5-0)Tulane (2-3) at UCF (2-2)Cent. Arkansas (3-3) at E. Kentucky (1-4)Virginia Tech (3-1) at Wake Forest (2-2)Alabama (4-0) at Tennessee (2-2)Georgia St. (1-2) at Troy (3-1)Chattanooga at W. Kentucky (1-4)Louisiana-Monroe (0-5) at South Ala-

bama (2-2)South Carolina (2-2) at LSU (1-2)Virginia (1-3) at Miami (4-1)

MIDWESTRutgers at Michigan St.Kansas (0-4) at Kansas St. (3-1)Nebraska at Ohio St.Iowa at PurduePenn St. at IndianaKentucky (2-2) at Missouri (1-2)Maryland at NorthwesternMichigan at Minnesota

SOUTHWESTOklahoma (2-2) at TCU (1-2)Abilene Christian (0-2) vs. Stephen F.

Austin (2-3) at Arlington, TexasIowa St. (3-1) at Oklahoma St. (3-0)Baylor (1-1) at Texas (2-2)Middle Tennessee (1-5) at RiceWest Virginia (3-1) at Texas Tech (1-3)Louisiana Tech (3-2) at UTSA (3-3)Cincinnati (3-0) at SMU (5-0)

FAR WESTWyoming at NevadaUtah St. at Boise St.Hawaii at Fresno St.New Mexico at Colorado St.Texas State (1-5) at BYU (5-0)Air Force (1-0) at San Jose St.UNLV at San Diego St.

Pro football

NFLAMERICAN CONFERENCE

East W L T Pct PF PABuffalo 4 2 0 .666 156 168Miami 3 3 0 .500 160 113New England 2 3 0 .400 109 110N.Y. Jets 0 6 0 .000 75 185

SouthTennessee 5 0 0 1.000 164 126Indianapolis 4 2 0 .666 157 115Houston 1 5 0 .166 146 182Jacksonville 1 5 0 .166 125 181

NorthPittsburgh 5 0 0 1.000 156 94Baltimore 5 1 0 .833 179 104Cleveland 4 2 0 .666 163 187Cincinnati 1 4 1 .250 129 157

WestKansas City 5 1 0 .833 175 127Las Vegas 3 2 0 .600 151 152Denver 2 3 0 .400 100 110L.A. Chargers 1 4 0 .200 110 125

NATIONAL CONFERENCEEast

W L T Pct PF PADallas 2 4 0 .333 173 218Philadelphia 1 4 1 .250 141 175N.Y. Giants 1 5 0 .166 101 152Washington 1 5 0 .166 108 162

SouthTampa Bay 4 2 0 .666 177 122New Orleans 3 2 0 .600 153 150Carolina 3 3 0 .500 138 141Atlanta 1 5 0 .166 162 184

NorthChicago 5 1 0 .833 128 116Green Bay 4 1 0 .800 162 139Detroit 2 3 0 .400 133 143Minnesota 1 5 0 .166 155 192

WestSeattle 5 0 0 1.000 169 135Arizona 4 2 0 .666 166 112L.A. Rams 4 2 0 .666 152 114San Francisco 3 3 0 .500 148 130

Sunday, Oct. 18Tennessee 42, Houston 36, OTN.Y. Giants 20, Washington 19Indianapolis 31, Cincinnati 27Atlanta 40, Minnesota 23, OTChicago 23, Carolina 16Detroit 34, Jacksonville 16Pittsburgh 38, Cleveland 7Denver 18, New England 12Baltimore 30, Philadelphia 28Miami 24, N.Y. Jets 0Tampa Bay 38, Green Bay 10San Francisco 24, L.A. Rams 16Open: L.A. Chargers, Las Vegas, New

Orleans, SeattleMonday, Oct. 19

Kansas City 26, Buffalo 17Arizona 38, Dallas 10

Thursday’s gameN.Y. Giants at Philadelphia

Sunday’s gamesBuffalo at N.Y. JetsPittsburgh at TennesseeGreen Bay at HoustonCleveland at CincinnatiCarolina at New OrleansDetroit at AtlantaDallas at WashingtonSeattle at ArizonaKansas City at DenverSan Francisco at New EnglandJacksonville at L.A. ChargersTampa Bay at Las VegasOpen: Baltimore, Indianapolis, Miami,

MinnesotaMonday, Oct. 26

Chicago at L.A. Rams

Tennis

European OpenTuesday

At Lotto ArenaAntwerp, Belgium

Purse: $394,800Surface: Hardcourt indoor

Men’s SinglesRound of 32

Cameron Norrie, Britain, def. Emil Ru-usuvuori, Finland, 6-3, 7-6 (4).

Daniel Evans, Britain, def. Salvatore Caruso, Italy, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3.

Pablo Andujar, Spain, def. Federico Coria, Argentina, 6-2, 6-3.

Marcos Giron, United States, def. Luca Nardi, Italy, 4-6, 6-4, 6-1.

Lloyd Harris, South Africa, def. Coren-tin Moutet, France, 7-5, 6-2.

Alex de Minaur (8), Australia, def. Richard Gasquet, France, 3-6, 7-6 (5), 6-3.

Zizou Bergs, Belgium, vs. Albert Ra-mos-Vinolas, Spain, 7-5, 7-5.

Men’s DoublesRound of 16

Simone Bolelli, Italy, and Maximo Gon-zalez, Argentina, def. Frederik Nielsen, Denmark, and Tim Puetz, Germany, 7-5, 6-2.

Daniel Evans and Cameron Norrie, Britain, def. Nicholas Monroe and Taylor Fritz, United States, 4-6, 6-3, 12-10.

Pablo Andujar, Spain, and Sander Ar-ends, Netherlands, def. Jean-Julien Ro-jer, Netherlands, and Fabrice Martin (3), France, 6-7, 6-2, 10-5.

Pro soccer

MLSEASTERN CONFERENCE

W L T Pts GF GAToronto FC 12 2 5 41 30 17Philadelphia 11 3 5 38 34 17Columbus 10 4 4 34 30 15Orlando City 8 2 8 32 30 18New England 7 5 7 28 21 18New York City FC 8 8 3 27 24 19New York 7 8 4 25 22 23Nashville SC 6 6 6 24 18 17Montreal 7 10 2 23 29 36Chicago 5 8 5 20 24 28Atlanta 5 10 4 19 18 22Inter Miami CF 5 11 3 18 19 29Cincinnati 4 11 4 16 11 30D.C. United 3 10 6 15 17 33

WESTERN CONFERENCE W L T Pts GF GASeattle 9 4 4 31 35 17Portland 9 5 4 31 38 30Sporting KC 9 6 3 30 31 25Los Angeles FC 7 7 4 25 40 34Minnesota United 6 5 6 24 28 23FC Dallas 6 5 6 24 22 20San Jose 6 7 6 24 28 43Vancouver 7 12 0 21 22 40Real Salt Lake 5 7 6 21 24 29Houston 4 7 8 20 27 32Colorado 5 4 4 19 25 20LA Galaxy 5 9 3 18 22 34

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

Sunday, Oct. 18Columbus 3, New York City FC 1Orlando City 1, New York 1, tieD.C. United 2, Cincinnati 1Toronto FC 1, Atlanta 0Houston 2, Minnesota 2, tieReal Salt Lake at Colorado ppd.Los Angeles FC 1, Portland 1, tieLA Galaxy 1, Vancouver 0Seattle 0, San Jose 0, tie

Monday, Oct. 19Philadelphia 2, New England 1

Tuesday’s gameNashville 3, FC Dallas 0

Wednesday’s gameSporting Kansas City at Colorado ppd.

Thursday’s gamePortland at Seattle

Friday’s gameNew England at Nashville

Saturday’s gamesOrlando City at MiamiD.C. United at AtlantaNew York at ChicagoMinnesota at CincinnatiMontreal at New York City FCToronto FC at PhiladelphiaColumbus at HoustonColorado at Sporting Kansas CityFC Dallas at Real Salt LakeSan Jose at Vancouver

Deals

Tuesday’s transactionsBASEBALL

Major League BaseballAmerican League

TAMPA BAY RAYS — Reassigned RHP Aaron Slegers and LHP Jose Alvarado to the minor leagues. Activated RF Brett Phillips and LHP Ryan Sherriff.

FOOTBALLNational Football League

ARIZONA CARDINALS — Re-signed OL Rick Lonard to the practice squad. Acti-vated RB D.J. Foster and TE Justin John-son from the practice squad injured re-serve list. Released S Kentrell Brice, CBs Jalen Davis and T.J. Ward.

ATLANTA FALCONS — Signed DL Pita Taumoepenu and DB Shyheim Carter to the practice squad. Released J.J. Wilcox.

CAROLINA PANTHERS — Signed S Sean Chandler from the New York Giants prac-tice squad. Placed S Justin Burris and WR Keith Kirkwood on injured reserve. Promoted S Kenny Robinson and OL Sam Tecklenburg to the active roster. Signed CB Josh Hawkins, DT Mike Panasiuk, DE Greg Roberts and RB Michael Warren to the practice squad.

CHICAGO BEARS — Signed LB Manti Te’o to the practice squad.

CLEVELAND BROWNS — Signed CB Prince Smith to the practice squad.

DALLAS COWBOYS — Activated DE Randy Gregory to the active roster. Waived WR Ventrell Bryant from injured reserve. Waived DB Saivion Smith.

DETROIT LIONS — Released QB/WR Joe Webb from the practice squad.

GREEN BAY PACKERS — Placed DB Parry Nickerson on injured reserve. Re-leased WR Kalija Lipscomb.

HOUSTON TEXANS — Signed WR Da-mio Ratley to the practice squad. Re-leased DT Ryan Glasgow.

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS — Signed S Ibra-heim Campbell to the practice squad. Released CB Christian Angulo.

LAS VEGAS RAIDERS — Activated QB Marcus Mariota from injured reserve.

LOS ANGELES RAMS — Signed K Kai Forbath from the Chicago Bears practice squad. Placed OLB Ogbo Okoronkwo on injured reserve.

NEW YORK GIANTS — Designated WR Sterling Shepard from injured reserve. Signed DE Jaball Sheard from Jackson-ville’s practice squad. Placed LB Tae Crowder on injured reserve.

NEW YORK JETS — Placed OLB Frankie Luvu on injured reserve.

SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS — Placed OL Ben Garland on injured reserve. Waived TE Daniel Helm. Placed CB Parnell Motley on active roster.

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS — Waived WR John Hurst. Signed DL Kobe Smith to the practice squad. Released S D’Cota Dixon.

TENNESSEE TITANS — Activated TE MyCole Pruitt from reserve/COVID-19 list. Activated DB Breon Borders from the reserve/COVID-19 list. Signed TE Parker Hesse to the practice squad. Released DBs Greg Mabin and Maurice Smith.

HOCKEYNational Hockey League

NASHVILLE PREDATORS — Signed F Rem Pitlick to a one-year, two-way con-tract.

Deals

World rankingsThrough Oct. 18

1. Dustin Johnson USA 10.15 2. Jon Rahm ESP 9.62 3. Justin Thomas USA 8.48 4. Collin Morikawa USA 7.60 5. Rory McIlroy NIR 7.54 6. Bryson DeChambeau USA 7.40 7. Xander Schauffele USA 7.18 8. Webb Simpson USA 7.01 9. Tyrrell Hatton ENG 6.2610. Patrick Reed USA 6.0011. Brooks Koepka USA 5.5512. Matthew Wolff USA 4.9613. Daniel Berger USA 4.8914. Patrick Cantlay USA 4.8215. Adam Scott AUS 4.8116. Tommy Fleetwood ENG 4.7017. Tony Finau USA 4.5018. Louis Oosthuizen SAF 4.2719. Matthew Fitzpatrick ENG 4.2320. Hideki Matsuyama JPN 4.0121. Abraham Ancer MEX 3.9422. Paul Casey ENG 3.8923. Sungjae Im KOR 3.8124. Viktor Hovland NOR 3.6225. Justin Rose ENG 3.5726. Jason Kokrak USA 3.5627. Marc Leishman AUS 3.5428. Tiger Woods USA 3.5129. Matt Kuchar USA 3.4630. Gary Woodland USA 3.4131. Shane Lowry IRL 3.4132. Scottie Scheffler USA 3.2833. Kevin Kisner USA 3.2134. Harris English USA 3.1035. Bernd Wiesberger AUT 3.0336. Ryan Palmer USA 3.0237. Victor Perez FRA 3.0138. Billy Horschel USA 2.9739. Kevin Na USA 2.8540. Sergio Garcia ESP 2.8141. Brendon Todd USA 2.7442. Lee Westwood ENG 2.7143. Jason Day AUS 2.6544. Joaquin Niemann CHN 2.6445. Rickie Fowler USA 2.5846. Matt Wallace ENG 2.5447. Chez Reavie USA 2.4748. Ian Poulter ENG 2.4549. Erik van Rooyen SAF 2.4450. Kevin Streelman USA 2.43

Pacers hire Torontoassistant as coach

Bjorkgren

Clippers confirm LueAssociated Press

LOS ANGELES — The Los An-geles Clippers on Tuesday con-firmed their hiring of Tyronn Lue to replace Doc Rivers as coach.

Lue spent last season as an as-sistant on Rivers’ staff. Rivers coached the Clippers for the last seven seasons and is now guiding the Philadelphia 76ers.

The team planned to introduce Lue virtually on Wednesday.

Lawrence Frank, the team’s president of basketball opera-tions, said the Clippers conducted a “thorough” search.

“We found that the best choice for our team was already in our building,” Frank said. “He’s one of the great minds in our league, and he’s able to impart his vision to others, because he connects with everybody he meets.”

Lue was on the Cleveland Cav-aliers’ staff when he replaced the

fired David Blatt during the 2015-16 season. Under Lue’s guidance,the Cavs and LeBron James went on to win their first NBA cham-pionship that season, making Lueone of the few rookie coaches inthe league to ever lead his teamto a title.

Lue, who won two NBA cham-pionships as a player with theLos Angeles Lakers, went 128-83in parts of four seasons as Cavscoach. He coached the team tothe NBA Finals in 2017 and 2018,but both times they lost to GoldenState. He was fired after an 0-6start to the 2018-19 season.

“The pieces we need are in place— committed ownership, smartmanagement, and elite talent, onand off the court, in the NBA’sbest market,” Lue said. “My fa-miliarity with the organization,particularly Mr. (Steve) Ballmer and Lawrence, confirmed this iswhere I want to be.”

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 20 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

BY JOHN ZENOR

Associated Press

If it wasn’t Jaylen Waddle out-running the Georgia defense, it was DeVonta Smith winning a fight for the ball in the back of the end zone or slipping free on a wheel route.

Not even No. 4 Georgia’s vaunt-ed defense could contain No. 2 Alabama’s speedy, crafty, sure-handed receivers Saturday night. The question now: Who can?

“Trying to cover outstand-ing receivers is really a difficult task,” Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said. “You have to have a really, really good secondary, you have to have really good guys to match up. That’s been an advan-tage for us. It was a huge advan-tage for us last year, and it’s an advantage for us this year.”

Smith and Waddle each deliv-ered another huge game in a 41-24 victory over the Bulldogs, who easily have the best defense Ala-bama has faced this season.

It’s one thing to do it against Mississippi, and another alto-gether to victimize Georgia.

“They made a couple big throws,” Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart said. “They beat us on some bubble plays and a double move with Waddle. They made a lot of big plays on 50-50 balls. Smith and Waddle had some big catches.”

What else is new? Smith and Waddle rank among

the nation’s top seven receivers in yards per game. And John Metchie III had 181 yards and two touchdowns against Texas A&M.

Waddle had a 90-yard touch-down against Georgia and has at least 120 receiving yards in all four games.

Smith has 24 catches for 231 yards and three touchdowns in the past two games, displaying his strong connection with quar-terback Mac Jones.

“That’s just us in practice just getting chemistry down and re-ally Mac just believing in me,” Smith said. “I always tell Mac: ‘You believe in me, I believe in you. I will never let you down.’ ”

Jones, whose three consecutive 400-yard passing games matches

Tua Tagovailoa’s career total, said the trust is mutual and that Smith has the confidence to say, “Throw it to me.”

“He says, ‘I don’t care if I’m triple covered, throw it to me,’ ” Jones said. “It’s hard to turn that down. He’s a (Michael) Jordan-level competitor.

“If you can get him the ball,

then he’ll make the play.”Same goes for Waddle, a dan-

gerous open-field runner who is also a threat as a punt returner. And Metchie, when he gets the chance.

The Tide also displayed their power running game with Najee Harris, who ran 31 times for 152 yards and a touchdown.

“They’re big, they’re physical,they lean on and wear on you andthey’ve got a great back,” Bull-dogs safety Richard LeCountesaid.

“The passing game they use isreally creative. They run a lot ofthe same plays from different for-mations and they did a good jobdisguising them with motions.”

Talented WRs have Tide in good hands

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

BY ERIC OLSON

Associated Press

The wait is almost over for the Big Ten.The ACC, Big 12 and SEC have been

playing anywhere from three to five weeks amid the pandemic, and all the players and coaches around the Big Ten could do is watch.

“Most of it’s been torture, just not being able to play games,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said. “There’s been a part of it I’ve actually enjoyed, but for the most part it’s been hard and I just want to be playing, get these guys on the field and get rolling.”

The eight-game, conference-only sched-ule begins Friday with Illinois visiting No. 14 Wisconsin. The rest of the league gets started Saturday. Every team plays every week through Dec. 12 barring cancella-tions because of outbreaks of COVID-19.

No. 5 Ohio State is favored to win a fourth straight league title and return to the Col-lege Football Playoff. Buckeyes quarter-back Justin Fields, with his wide array of weapons around him, is among the Heis-man Trophy front-runners after finishing third in last year’s voting.

Defending West champion Wisconsin and No. 21 Minnesota are expected to bat-tle it out again for the division title.

Just getting to this point has been an ad-venture. The Big Ten initially put out a 10-game schedule on Aug. 5 only to cancel the season six days later in the name of player safety.

As the ACC, Big 12 and SEC pushed for-ward with plans to play, the outcry against the Big Ten’s decision was relentless. Ne-braska hinted it might schedule games on its own and eight of its players sued the conference. Groups of players’ par-ents demanded further explanation from Commissioner Kevin Warren and demon-strated near league headquarters. Presi-

dent Donald Trump phoned Warren and encouraged him to play.

The conference reversed course Sept. 16, saying the emergence of rapid virus testing would allow for a season. There are stringent medical protocols, including daily antigen testing, and a positive result would require a player to sit out 21 days.

On Monday, it was announced that Pur-due coach Jeff Brohm would have to miss Saturday’s season-opener at home against Iowa because of two positive coronavirus tests.

“It’s been a roller coaster of emotions for sure — we’re playing, not playing,” Nebraska tight end Austin Allen said. “It’s been tough for sure knowing (other confer-ences) are out there playing, but we’ll get our time. We’ve got games coming up and we’ll take care of business.”

Top returneesIn addition to Fields, the 2019 offensive

player of the year, fellow Associated Press All-Big Ten first-team picks return in Ohio State offensive lineman Wyatt Davis, Iowa kicker Keith Duncan and Illinois punter Blake Hayes. Also back is the 2019 new-comer of the year, Purdue receiver David Bell.

Davis is among players who rejoined their teams after initially deciding to opt out. Some others are Purdue star receiver Rondale Moore, who was limited to four games because of injury; Minnesota 1,200-yard receiver Rashod Bateman; Ohio State cornerback Shaun Wade; Michigan offensive lineman Jaylen Mayfield; and Michigan State defensive lineman Jacub Panasiuk.

Schedule scrambleThe Big Ten is on the third iteration of its

schedule, following the original released in the spring and the 10-game slate put out in early August. The conference champion-

ship game is set for Dec. 19. The rest of the teams also will play a ninth game that day against the team that finishes in the same spot in the opposite division.

Nebraska got the toughest schedule, withthree of its first four games against Top 25 opponents (at No. 5 Ohio State, vs. No. 14Wisconsin, at Northwestern, vs. No. 8 PennState). Northwestern has the easiest cross-over games, with their opener at home against Maryland and a trip to Michigan State on Nov. 28.

2 new head coachesMel Tucker takes over at Michigan State

for Mark Dantonio, who retired after 13 years, and Greg Schiano returns to Rut-gers to replace Chris Ash, who was firedfour games into last season.

Tucker was 5-7 in his only year at Colo-rado before he bolted for Michigan State.He was a graduate assistant there under Nick Saban in the 1990s.

Schiano returned to Rutgers after eight years. He led the Scarlet Knights to a 68-67record and six bowl games from 2001-11.He was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers headcoach in 2012-13 and Ohio State defensivecoordinator from 2016-18.

Streaks and suchOhio State has the nation’s third-longest

active home winning streak at 20 gamesand second-longest road streak at seven.

Rutgers has dropped 13 in a row on the road and 21 straight conference games.

Nebraska’s NCAA-record 375-gamesellout streak, which started in 1962, is onhold.

The Big Ten’s no-fan edict also meansMichigan will have fewer than 100,000 fans in the Big House for the first timesince 1975.

Better late than never: Big Ten gets underway

JAY LAPRETE/AP

Coach Ryan Day and No. 5 Ohio State is favored to win a fourth consecutive Big Ten title. The Buckeyes open their season at home Saturday against Nebraska.

ROGELIO V. SOLIS/AP

Alabama wide receiver Jaylen Waddle, left, has had at least 120 receiving yards in all four of his team’s games this season, but he’s not the only talented wide receiver for the Crimson Tide.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 21Thursday, October 22, 2020

NFL

Weekly statistics

AFC individual leadersWeek 6

Quarterbacks Att Com Yds TD IntWatson, Hou 200 137 1786 13 5Allen, Buf 216 145 1711 16 4Mahomes, KC 219 144 1699 15 1Minshew, Jac 240 162 1682 11 5Burrow, Cin 246 160 1617 6 4Rivers, Ind 198 138 1598 7 6Fitzpatrick, Mia 197 138 1535 10 7Carr, Las 175 128 1442 11 1Tannehill, Ten 173 121 1368 13 2Herbert, LAC 141 97 1195 9 3

Rushers Att Yds Avg LG TDHenry, Ten 123 588 4.8 94t 6Edwards-Helaire, KC 107 505 4.7 31 1Mixon, Cin 119 428 3.6 34t 3Hunt, Cle 83 387 4.7 33 3Jacobs, Las 106 377 3.6 16 5Conner, Pit 75 369 4.9 59 4Taylor, Ind 89 367 4.1 21 3J.Robinson, Jac 85 362 4.3 39 3Da.Johnson, Hou 87 350 4.0 29 3Jackson, Bal 50 346 6.9 50t 2

Receivers No Yds Avg LG TDDiggs, Buf 42 555 13.2 49 3Kelce, KC 37 470 12.7 45 5Fuller, Hou 28 455 16.3 53t 4Boyd, Cin 37 416 11.2 25 1Hill, KC 25 384 15.4 54t 4Crowder, NYJ 29 383 13.2 69t 2M.Brown, Bal 26 376 14.5 47 1Cooks, Hou 27 367 13.6 38 2Parker, Mia 29 364 12.6 28 2Cole, Jac 27 362 13.4 51 3

Punters No Yds Lg AvgBojorquez, Buf 16 813 72 50.8Townsend, KC 20 982 67 49.1Bailey, NE 13 629 60 48.4Huber, Cin 26 1248 70 48.0Anger, Hou 21 997 59 47.5Long, LAC 21 993 63 47.3Sanchez, Ind 15 705 60 47.0Kern, Ten 14 651 66 46.5Koch, Bal 22 1009 59 45.9Mann, NYJ 35 1597 59 45.6

Punt Returners No Yds Avg Long TDRoberts, Buf 10 147 14.7 38 0Hines, Ind 12 118 9.8 21 0Grant, Mia 15 139 9.3 30 0Erickson, Cin 9 82 9.1 22 0Proche, Bal 15 131 8.7 17 0Carter, Hou 8 68 8.5 19 0Raymond, Ten 11 84 7.6 40 0Johnson, Pit 7 50 7.1 18 0

Kickoff Returners No Yds Avg LG TDRodgers, Ind 8 293 36.6101t 1Duvernay, Bal 8 275 34.4 93t 1B.Wilson, Cin 8 222 27.8 45 0McCloud, Pit 8 220 27.5 49 0Roberts, Buf 10 271 27.1 39 0Peoples-Jones, Cle 12 261 21.8 32 0Carter, Hou 11 230 20.9 29 0

ScoringTouchdowns

TD Rush Rec Ret PtsClaypool, Pit 6 2 4 0 36Henry, Ten 6 6 0 0 36Hunt, Cle 6 3 3 0 36Andrews, Bal 5 0 5 0 30Hill, KC 5 1 4 0 30Jacobs, Las 5 5 0 0 30Kelce, KC 5 0 5 0 30Newton, NE 5 5 0 0 30J.Smith, Ten 5 0 5 0 30

Kicking PAT FG LG PtsBlankenship, Ind 15-15 16-18 44 63Tucker, Bal 20-20 13-14 55 59Sanders, Mia 13-13 15-15 52 58Bullock, Cin 12-12 15-17 55 57Carlson, Las 16-17 11-12 54 49Butker, KC 15-19 10-11 58 45Fairbairn, Hou 14-15 10-11 50 44McManus, Den 8-8 12-13 56 44Gostkowski, Ten 15-17 9-14 55 42Parkey, Cle 18-18 7-7 46 39

NFC individual leadersWeek 6

Quarterbacks Att Com Yds TD IntPrescott, Dal 222 151 1856 9 4Ryan, Atl 244 159 1843 11 3Bridgewater, Car 206 146 1676 6 5Goff, LAR 190 128 1570 10 4Brady, TB 223 143 1541 14 4Wilson, Sea 169 123 1502 19 3K.Murray, Ari 205 135 1487 10 6Cousins, Min 175 113 1475 11 10Wentz, Phi 235 138 1401 8 9Rodgers, GB 174 114 1374 13 2

Rushers Att Yds Avg LG TDCook, Min 92 489 5.3 39t 7Drake, Ari 105 478 4.6 69t 4Jones, TB 97 472 4.9 37 3Sanders, Phi 71 434 6.1 74t 3Gurley, Atl 99 422 4.3 35t 5Elliott, Dal 101 413 4.1 24 5Jones, GB 75 389 5.2 75t 5K.Murray, Ari 51 370 7.3 48 6Henderson, LAR 72 348 4.8 40 3Montgomery, Chi 82 305 3.7 23 1

Receivers No Yds Avg LG TDHopkins, Ari 47 601 12.8 60 2Anderson, Car 40 566 14.2 75t 1Ridley, Atl 35 546 15.6 63 5Jefferson, Min 28 537 19.2 71t 3Cooper, Dal 46 503 10.9 58 2Lamb, Dal 36 497 13.8 43t 2Metcalf, Sea 22 496 22.5 62 5McLaurin, Was 36 487 13.5 39 1Moore, Car 27 474 17.6 57t 1Robinson, Chi 40 474 11.9 37t 2

Punters No Yds Lg AvgFox, Det 19 998 67 52.5Johnston, Phi 27 1375 66 50.9Dickson, Sea 22 1092 67 49.6Way, Was 32 1555 61 48.6Hekker, LAR 21 1014 63 48.3Wishnowsky, SF 20 922 59 46.1O’Donnell, Chi 28 1280 64 45.7Dixon, NYG 18 811 62 45.1Pinion, TB 25 1126 59 45.0Colquitt, Min 19 840 57 44.2

Punt Returners No Yds Avg Long TDHarris, NO 7 106 15.1 22 0Powell, Atl 8 79 9.9 24 0Lamb, Dal 11 85 7.7 27 0Mickens, TB 14 98 7.0 14 0Kupp, LAR 8 49 6.1 10 0S.Sims, Was 10 56 5.6 19 0Cooper, Car 9 48 5.3 19 0Ward, Phi 8 39 4.9 11 0

Kickoff Returners No Yds Avg LG TDPatterson, Chi 15 468 31.2 47 0Agnew, Det 7 192 27.4 35 0Cooper, Car 13 322 24.8 38 0Homer, Sea 8 184 23.0 44 0Powell, Atl 10 208 20.8 29 0Pollard, Dal 15 297 19.8 31 0Ervin, GB 7 136 19.4 34 0

ScoringTouchdowns

TD Rush Rec Ret PtsCook, Min 7 7 0 0 42Jones, GB 7 5 2 0 42Kamara, NO 7 4 3 0 42Thielen, Min 7 0 7 0 42Carson, Sea 6 3 3 0 36Elliott, Dal 6 5 1 0 36Evans, TB 6 0 6 0 36K.Murray, Ari 6 6 0 0 36

Kicking PAT FG LG PtsSlye, Car 10-12 16-18 48 58Koo, Atl 11-13 15-16 54 56Gano, NYG 6-6 15-16 55 51Succop, TB 19-20 10-12 50 49Lutz, NO 18-18 9-9 53 45Crosby, GB 17-18 9-9 52 44Santos, Chi 12-12 10-12 55 42Prater, Det 14-14 9-12 44 41Zuerlein, Dal 14-16 9-11 46 41Gonzalez, Ari 19-20 7-9 56 40Gould, SF 16-16 8-9 52 40

BY STEVEN WINE

Associated Press

MIAMI — Tua Tagovailoa now has a role to match his jersey number. He’s the Miami Dolphins’ No. 1 quarterback.

The former Alabama star will make his first NFL start next week for the Miami Dolphins, who are turning to him to re-place Ryan Fitzpatrick .

The change by coach Brian Flores will come after the Dolphins’ bye this week and has been long anticipated, but the timing is surprising because the team won its past two games to improve to 3-3. Tagovailoa will start at home against the Los Angeles Rams on Nov. 1.

News of the change leaked Tuesday. Flores says he regrets that his players found out about the switch through social media rather than from him.

“The one thing in this situation that’s

unfortunate is that I didn’t get a chance to address the team before this was out in the media,” Flores said. “It’s not the way I or we want to do business. Unfortunately, it’s kind of the way of the world right now.

“I’m not happy about that at all. I’ll ad-dress that to the team, and really apologize to them that they had to find out through social media. I don’t think that’s fair to them.”

And Flores says the decision to bench popular veteran Fitzpatrick was difficult.

“Fitz has done a great job,” Flores said Wednesday. “He has been productive. His leadership has been great. But we felt like for the team now, moving forward, this is a move we need to make.”

Tagovailoa made his pro debut in mop-up duty at the end of Miami’s 24-0 victory Sunday over the New York Jets. He will become the 22nd quarterback to start for the Dolphins since Dan Marino retired fol-

lowing the 1999 season.At Alabama, Tagovailoa wore Marino’s

No. 13. That Dolphins jersey is retired, and so Tagovailoa now wears No. 1.

Touted as a potential franchise quarter-back, the dynamic Tagovailoa raises the profile of a team that has been off the NFL radar for much of the past two decades. He was drafted in April with the fifth overall pick — the highest choice Miami has de-voted to a QB since Bob Griese in 1967.

Tagovailoa is coming back from a seri-ous hip injury that cut short his Alabama career last November. The recovery slowed his preparation to assume a starting NFL job, as did the coronavirus pandemic that forced the cancellation of offseason drills and exhibition games.

“He has been thrown into a very difficult situation in that he didn’t have any pre-season, he didn’t have really an offseason,” Dolphins offensive coordinator Chan Gai-

ley said Tuesday, shortly before the newsof Tagovailoa’s promotion broke.

Fitzpatrick, 37, described himself duringtraining camp as a placeholder. He is beingbenched even though he ranks fifth in theNFL in completion percentage, and Miami is on pace for its highest-scoring seasonsince 1986 at 26.7 points per game.

Tagovailoa went 2-for-2 for 9 yardsagainst the Jets.

“Under duress he made an accurate throw,” Gailey said. “Then he sat in thepocket on third down and made a throw fora first down. For a guy that hadn’t played asnap, those are real positives.”

“He has gotten more comfortable,” Flores said. “Accuracy, decision-making,all those things have been good in practice.Practice is very different from games, butwe’re comfortable and confident he’ll beable to be competitive.”

BY PAT GRAHAM

Associated Press

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Brandon McManus and his powerful right leg were benched for the New England game — in quite a few fantasy football leagues, anyway.

The Denver Broncos kicker took notice, too.McManus couldn’t resist a playful jab on Twitter

after his franchise-best, six field-goal performance against the Patriots: “95.5% of fantasy didn’t play me. Shout out to the 4.5% who ride or die with me.”

From about midfield in, the Broncos (2-3) certain-ly have total confidence in “McMoney“ McManus, which he was jokingly called after recently inking a new deal. The reliable McManus has become a safe-ty net for an injury-riddled offense that’s trying to get on track with QB Drew Lock back at the helm.

“He definitely allows us to take a deep breath,” said Lock, who returned from a sprained right shoulder in the 18-12 win over the Patriots on Sunday. “(We) can call what we feel like and call what we want. That was kind of the game plan.”

For McManus, his big day at New England was a years-in-the-making chance at redemption. He missed a 41-yarder off the right upright inside Gil-lette Stadium on Nov. 2, 2014.

Three weeks later, he was cut by Denver before being brought back to handle the kickoff duties.

“This place is special for me to kind of come back and perform like that,” said McManus, who signed a four-year, $17.2 million extension in September. “It’s always difficult to kick here in a stadium like this.”

McManus made it look like a breeze. He connected from 45, 44, 27, 52, 20 and 54 yards. It’s the sixth time he’s made multiple field goals of 50 or more yards in a game, which ties Baltimore’s Justin Tucker for most in NFL history.

McManus had a crack at a 57-yarder early in the fourth quarter, but the team elected to pass leading 18-3.

A calculated decision in the estimation of McManus.

“If I miss that, they get the ball at midfield and definitely the momentum,“ said McManus, whose team has won two in a row heading into a home game against Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs (5-1) on Sunday. “I really wasn’t itching at all to go out there.”

That’s in contrast to last season, when McManus had a sideline outburst after coach Vic Fangio called him back as he was preparing to attempt an NFL re-cord 65-yarder at altitude.

But that decision by Fangio has only served to fuel him. McManus is 12 of 13 on field goals this season, including a 53-yarder to put the Broncos up for good late in the fourth at the New York Jets on Oct. 1. That

helped net him AFC special teams player of the week honors, which he figures to be up for again.

“When we come out to practice, he wants to finish at 65 and 66 (yards), and I think it’s the right mes-sage to send because you really actually just send it to yourself,” special teams coordinator Tom McMa-hon said. “He wants to go big and he wants to kick from deep. His Achilles has been 50-plus yard kicks in his career and he’s attacking it and we really like it.”

McManus isn’t your ordinary kicker. He doesn’t even think of himself as a kicker, but simply as an athlete. One of his close friends on the team is pass rusher Von Miller, who is sidelined with a dislodged tendon in his left foot.

Miller’s drive motivates McManus, too.“We both want to be the most successful athlete

ever at our positions,” McManus said. “I never want to be looked at as a kicker and I never act like a kick-er because that’s not my personality.”

Granted, the six field goals were nice, but Den-ver is are looking for more production. The Broncos were 0-for-2 in the red zone against New England.

“We’re going to have to work harder at finishing our drives,” Fangio said. “Usually that can come back to bite you and if we hadn’t held on there then it would have bitten us. ”

“From the 50 we know he’s going to put that thing in. That’s three points for us,” cornerback Michael Ojemudia said. “We’re confident he’s going to put it in because he’s done it in practice.”

Dolphins turning to Tua as starter after bye

Solid place-kicker McManus still ‘McMoney’ for Broncos

STEVEN SENNE/AP

Broncos kicker Brandon McManus, center, watches one of his four first-half field goals on Sunday against the Patriots .

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 22 F3HIJKLM Thursday, October 22, 2020

WORLD SERIES

BY SCHUYLER DIXON

Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Texas

Tyler Glasnow had already given up a two-run homer and four of his six walks when he went back out for the fifth inning.

Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash might have waited a smidge too long to go to his bullpen in Game 1 of the World Series.

Glasnow was charged with all four runs in the small-ball fifth by the Los Angeles Dodgers — three singles, four walks and three stolen bases that tied a Fall Classic record — as the Rays lost 8-3 on Tues-day night in the franchise’s first Series game since 2008.

“I think ultimately it was kind of a lack of strikes thrown right here,” Cash said. “That’s not ideal, es-pecially against an offense like this that can really capitalize on the free passes.”

The 6-foot-8 Glasnow started fast enough in his first World Series start, pumping the occasional 100 mph fastball while matching postseason veteran Clayton Kershaw out for out through three innings.

But after striking out three around the second of his three walks to Corey Seager in the third, Glas-now walked Max Muncy to start the fourth. Two batters later, Cody Bellinger hit the fastest pitch he

ever has for a homer (98.2 mph).“I felt a little weird in the beginning, made the ad-

justment I think in that third inning and started to feel pretty good,” Glasnow said. “As the game went on, I think I was just getting on the side of it, getting a little rushed, going forward just a bit too quick. Too many walks, not executing well enough.”

Glasnow, who struck out eight, started the fifth with consecutive walks to Mookie Betts and Seager, but Cash stayed with him long enough to give up Muncy’s run-scoring fielder’s choice after a double steal by Betts and Seager, and Will Smith’s soft sin-gle to center.

“He had plenty of stuff to keep us right there,” Cash said. “The walks are definitely not ideal. Glas would be the first to recognize that. We didn’t do a good job holding the runners on. We can’t let them get the double steal right there.”

Cash said he stuck with Glasnow against Muncy because he thought that was the best chance for a strikeout with runners at second and third. Muncy hit a sharp grounder to first baseman Yandy Diaz, who lunged toward second to make the stop but had to throw across his body. Betts beat the throw with a headfirst slide.

The six runs were the most Glasnow has al-lowed in seven postseason starts. The six walks and 112 pitches were career highs for the 27-year-old right-hander.

When he finally pulled Glasnow, Cash was boxed in because he needed lefty reliever Ryan Yarbrough to face the left-handed Bellinger, who popped out.

Yarbrough had to stay because of the three-bat-ter minimum, and right-hitting Chris Taylor had an RBI single before Kíké Hernandez pinch-hit for the lefty Joc Pederson and singled in another run.

Glasnow, one of the shrewd moves that helped the Rays get this far when he was acquired for ace Chris Archer at the trading deadline two years ago, had to pitch the opener because Tampa Bay struggled to close out Houston after winning the first three games in the AL Championship Series.

Aces Blake Snell and Charlie Morton had to pitch Games 6 and 7, with Morton winning as the Rays avoided joining the New York Yankees (2004 ALCS against Boston) as the only teams to blow 3-0 leads in the postseason.

Stars: Dodgers tryingto focus on task at handFROM BACK PAGE

at Globe Life Field, the new $1.2 billion home of the Texas Rang-ers, marked the smallest for base-ball’s top event in 111 years.

Los Angeles hopes to go home with a title that has eluded the Dodgers since 1988 but tried to guard against focusing ahead.

“It’s hard not to think about winning. It’s hard not to think about what that might be like,” Kershaw said. “Constantly keep putting that in your brain: tomor-row, win tomorrow, win tomor-row, win tomorrow. And then you do that three more times, and you can think about it all you want.”

A regular-season star with an erratic postseason history, Ker-shaw looked like the ace who so often stars on midsummer evenings with the San Gabriel Mountains behind him at Dodger Stadium. With these games shift-ed, the 32-year-old left-hander wound up pitching not far from his offseason home in Dallas.

The three-time Cy Young Award winner allowed one run and two hits, struck out eight and walked one. He induced 19 swings and misses among his 78 pitches — more than his three previous Series starts combined.

“You can appreciate and totally see why he’s heading to the Hall of Fame one day whenever he’s done,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said.

Kershaw threw nine balls in the first, when he stranded a pair of runners, then threw just nine more over the next three innings.

“He had a game plan to try to really quiet down things from there and he executed,” said Kevin Kiermaier, who ended Kershaw’s streak of 13 retired in a row with a fifth-inning homer on a hanging slider that cut the Rays’ deficit to 2-1.

Kershaw, a five-time ERA champ, improved to 2-2 in the World Series and 12-12 in post-season play, a shadow of his 175-76 regular-season record. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts did not pitch him after Game 4 of

the NL Championship Series lastThursday.

“I think we were going to stay away from him in Game 7 just forthis particular reason,” Robertssaid.

Game 2 is Wednesday night. The Dodgers, who posted the best record in the majors duringthe shortened season and showedoff all their stars in Game 1, planto throw a collection of pitchers started by Tony Gonsolin againstRays ace Blake Snell.

Bellinger, the 2019 NL MVPwho began the opener with a ca-reer .114 batting average in 12World Series games, had put theDodgers ahead in the fourth witha two-run homer off Glasnow,having no trouble driving a 98mph pitch into the Dodgers bull-pen in right-center.

Bellinger, whose seventh-in-ning homer put the Dodgersahead in Game 7 of the NL Cham-pionship on Sunday, shuffled hisfeet, tapping gently as he crossedthe plate and celebrated by toetapping teammates while danc-ing back to the dugout, a sign he remembered popping his rightshoulder during raucous revelrytwo nights earlier.

Bellinger capped his eveningby leaping at the 6-foot centerfield wall in the ninth, robbing Austin Meadows of a possiblehome run.

“I said it today before the game: If I hit one I’m not touching any-body’s arm,” Bellinger said. “I’mgoing straight foot, and it waspretty funny.”

After a regular season playedwithout fans, MLB resumed sell-ing tickets with a limited amountfor the NLCS at Globe Life and kept that up by allowing about 28% of capacity to be filled at the 40,518-seat ballpark, where theroof was open. The crowd waswidely dispersed throughout andwas the smallest for the Seriessince 10,535 attended Game 6between the Pirates and Tigers at Detroit’s Bennett Park in 1909,according to the Elias SportsBureau.

PHOTOS BY TONY GUTIERREZ/AP

Tampa Bay Rays starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow surrenders six runs on three hits during Game 1 of the World Series on Tuesday in Arlington, Texas. He walked six and struck out eight over 4 1⁄3 innings.

Tampa starter Glasnowwilts after strong start

One of the 11,388 fans allowed in Globe Life Park watches during the seventh inning.

TONY GUTIERREZ/AP

The Tampa Bay Rays’ Kevin Kiermaier celebrates in the dugout Tuesday after hitting a home run against the Los Angeles Dodgers during the fifth inning of Game 1 of the World Series.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 23

BY STEPHEN HAWKINS

Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Texas — Mook-ie Betts slid headfirst across home plate, then popped up and did a double pump with his right fist. An inning later, he got to trot around the bases after going deep.

That big commitment to Betts is already paying off for the Los Angeles Dodgers this postseason.

After run-saving catches in three consecutive potential elimi-nation games to get the Dodgers this far, Betts put his speed, in-stincts and power on display in Game 1 of the World Series. There was a Ruth-like journey around the bases to score — and that was even before his solo homer in an 8-3 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night.

“Mookie is pretty special,” said teammate Clayton Kershaw, who pitched six strong innings for the win. “He does things on a baseball field that not many people can do and he does it pretty consistently, which separates him from a lot of guys.

“You might see one game and not really appreciate Mookie to his full potential.”

Betts led off the Los Angeles fifth with a walk and stole second base. After NL Championship Se-ries MVP Corey Seager drew a walk behind him, they pulled off a double steal.

“That’s just another element that Mookie brings. He does a lot of studying to be able to create stress,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.

Then, with the Rays infield playing in, Max Muncy hit a bouncer to first baseman Yandy Diaz, who threw on the run after Betts broke quickly for the plate. He slid past the attempted tag for a 3-1 lead.

“It’s just all practice,” Betts said. “In BP, I run the bases. In spring training, we’re running bases, constantly putting in this work for this time.”

The only other player with a walk and multiple stolen bases in an inning during a World Series game was Babe Ruth in 1921.

“Stolen bases are a thing for me. That’s how I create runs and create havoc on the basepaths,” Betts said.

“Once you get on the bases, you’re not a hitter anymore — you run the bases. When you’re in the outfield, you’re on defense. I’m able to focus on the task at hand.”

When Betts led off the sixth with an opposite-field homer to right to make it 7-1, that was only his second career postseason homer — the other came in the 2018 World Series for Boston in a five-game series win over Los Angeles. That made Betts the first player to have a home run, two stolen bases and two runs scored in a World Series game.

“I did a good job but my main responsibility is to win a World Series,” Betts said. “That’s all I’m trying to do.”

The Dodgers, who won their last World Series title in 1988, acquired the four-time All-Star and four-time Gold Glove winner from the Red Sox in February, even agreeing to pay Boston $48 million over three years as part of the deal. It also brought Los Angeles left-hander David Price, who opted out of playing this sea-son because of the pandemic.

Already signed to a $27 million, one-year deal that would have made the star right fielder eli-gible for free agency this offsea-son, the 28-year-old Betts agreed in July to a $365 million, 12-year contract that includes a $65 mil-lion signing bonus guaranteed against work stoppages and short-

ened seasons such as this one.I “It’s so fun to watch and we’re

so lucky to have him on our team,” said Dodgers slugger Cody Bell-inger, who also homered.

Thursday, October 22, 2020

BY JAKE SEINER

Associated Press

Winning Game 1 was a sweet way to start the World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The cherry on top: all the big arms left on ice.

Kenley Jansen, Blake Treinen and Brusdar Graterol should be fresh for Wednesday after watch-ing the Dodgers’ 8-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 1. Clayton Kershaw provided six tidy innings, and Los Angeles closed it out without exhausting the back of its bullpen.

The pitching-weary Dodgers couldn’t have scripted a better start. They pushed their top arms hard in the NL Championship Se-ries, which came down to a Game 7 on Sunday. Starting pitchers Walker Buehler, Julio Urias, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May each took the mound during an all-hands-on-deck effort to close out the series over the weekend.

Aces of Octobers past — like Bob Gibson or Tom Seaver — might have rushed back on short rest for the World Series. Man-ager Dave Roberts is being more cautious with his No. 1 starter, keeping Buehler on regular rest for Game 3.

That leaves a hole for Game 2, where nobody figures to be fresh enough for a starter’s workload.

The Dodgers announced after Game 1 that Gonsolin would pitch first, but the right-hander should be on a short leash after throwing 41 pitches Sunday. A 26-year-old NL Rookie of the Year contender, Gonsolin’s best pitch is a hard-diving splitter that’s equally ef-fective against righties and lefties — advantageous against the Rays’ balanced lineup.

“We just like him in this spot,” Roberts said.

May could cover multiple in-nings after throwing just 18 pitch-es Sunday. Roberts said Uriasalso would be available, although L.A. would surely like to save himfor a potential start in Game 4.

With a day off Thursday, ev-eryone else will be available. Thebiggest spots will undoubtedly go to Jansen, Treinen and Graterol.

Jansen is trying to shake post-season demons recent and past. He has blown more saves (three)than he has converted (two) in two previous World Series visits, including consecutive botchedchances against Boston in Games3 and 4 of the 2018 Series.

The three-time All-Star lost thezip on his cutter down the stretchthis season, and Roberts removedhim from the closer’s role after a lousy outing against San Diego during the Division Series.

Jansen got a week off betweenoutings, corrected his mechanicsand delivered three perfect out-ings against Atlanta, including a save in Game 6.

“You know once it clicked, ev-erything is going to come with it,”Jansen said afterward.

The Rays have 2018 Cy YoungAward winner Blake Snell tabbedfor Game 2. Manager Kevin Cash — uncharacteristically slow to pull starter Tyler Glasnow inGame 1 — also has fresh arms in the bullpen after riding mop-uplefty Josh Fleming to cover thelate innings Tuesday.

WORLD SERIES

Dodgers keep Jansen, rest fresh for Game 2

Bullpen saved

SUE OGROCKI/AP

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Mookie Betts homers during the sixth inning of the Dodgers’ 8-3 defeat of the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 1 of the World Series on Tuesday in Arlington, Texas.

TONY GUTIERREZ/AP

Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher Kenley Jansen, after earning a save in Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, wasn’t needed Monday in the first game of the World Series. Starter Clayton Kershaw pitched six innings, giving the bullpen some rest.

Scoreboard

World Series(Best-of-seven)x-if necessary

At Arlington, TexasLos Angeles Dodgers 1, Tampa Bay 0Tuesday: L.A. Dodgers 8, Tampa Bay 3Wednesday: Game 2 Friday: Game 3, Los Angeles (Buehler

1-0) vs. Tampa Bay (TBD) (AFN-Sports, 2 a.m. Saturday CET; 9 a.m. Saturday JKT)

Saturday: Game 4 (AFN-Sports, 2 a.m. Sunday CET; 9 a.m. Sunday JKT)

x-Sunday, Oct. 26: Game 5 (AFN-Sports, 2 a.m. Monday CET; 9 a.m. Mon-day JKT)

x-Tuesday, Oct. 27: Game 6 (AFN-Sports, 2 a.m. Wednesday CET; 9 a.m. Wednesday JKT)

x-Wednesday, Oct. 28: Game 7 (AFN-Sports, 2 a.m. Thursday CET; 9 a.m. Thursday JKT)

MondayDodgers 8, Rays 3

Tampa Bay Los Angeles ab r h bi ab r h biDiaz 1b 4 0 1 0 Betts rf 4 2 2 1Lowe 2b 4 0 0 0 Seager ss 2 1 0 0Arzarena dh 3 0 0 0 Turner 3b 4 1 1 0Renfroe rf 2 0 0 0 Muncy 1b 4 2 2 2Mdows ph-rf 2 0 0 0 Smith dh 5 1 1 1Margot lf 4 1 1 0 Bellinger cf 4 1 1 2Wndle 3b-ss 4 1 1 0 Taylor 2b-lf 3 0 2 1Adames ss 2 0 0 0 Pederson lf 2 0 0 0Choi ph 0 0 0 0 Hrdz ph-2b 2 0 1 1Brssu ph-3b 1 0 1 1 Barnes c 4 0 0 0Kiermaier cf 3 1 2 2 Zunino c 3 0 0 0 Totals 32 3 6 3 Totals 34 8 10 8Tampa Bay 000 010 200—3Los Angeles 000 242 00x—8

DP—Tampa Bay 1, Los Angeles 1. LOB—Tampa Bay 3, Los Angeles 9. 2B—Wendle (1), Turner (1), Muncy (1). HR—Kiermaier (1), Bellinger (1), Betts (1). SB—Betts 2 (2), Seager (1). IP H R ER BB SOTampa BayGlasnow L,0-1 41⁄3 3 6 6 6 8Yarbrough 2⁄3 2 0 0 0 0Fleming 22⁄3 5 2 2 1 2Curtiss 1⁄3 0 0 0 0 1Los AngelesKershaw W,1-0 6 2 1 1 1 8Floro 1⁄3 2 2 2 0 1Gonzalez 2⁄3 2 0 0 0 0Baez 1 0 0 0 0 0Kelly 1 0 0 0 0 1

WP—Glasnow. T—3:24. A—11,388 (40,300).

Dodgers’ winning Betts: Star is paying off in the postseason

DID YOU KNOW ?Coming into the World Series, the Dodgers’ relievers had thrown 48 of the team’s 89 postseason innings.

SOURCE: Baseballreference.com

S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S Thursday, October 22, 2020 F3HIJKLM

SPORTS

Indiana hires Toronto assistant as coach » NBA, Page 19

WORLD SERIES

Making a changeDolphins starting Tagovailoaat QB after bye » NFL, Page 21

BY RONALD BLUM

Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Texas

Clayton Kershaw, Cody Bellinger, Mook-ie Betts — the Los Angeles Dodgers stars all shined.

Nothing out of the ordinary there, even if the setting was surreal.

Baseball’s best team during the pan-

demic-shortened season showed off its many talentsin the first World Series game played at a neutral site, beating the Tampa Bay Rays 8-3 Tuesday night.

With the seats mostly empty, Kershaw dominatedfor six innings, Bellinger and Betts homered and theDodgers chased a wild Tyler Glasnow in the fifth in-ning and coasted home in the opener.

A crowd limited by the coronavirus to 11,388

SEE STARS ON PAGE 22

Both Mookie Betts, left, and Cody Bellinger homered Tuesday for the Los Angeles Dodgers during their 8-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 1 of the World Series in Arlington, Texas.ERIC GAY, LEFT, AND TONY GUTIERREZ, BELOW/AP

Shining starsBig players lift Dodgers in Game 1

Inside:� Dodgers able to rest tired bullpen, Page 23� Betts paying off for LA in playoffs, Page 23� Rays’ Glasnow wilts in 5th inning, Page 22