Volume 80 Edition 40B ©SS 2021 CONTINGENCY EDITION SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 2021 Free to Deployed Areas
stripes.com
MILITARY
Border wall fundsshifting to delayedconstruction projectsPage 3
WAR
Afghan Hazaraskilled at school,play, even at birth Page 7
MUSIC
Wolfgang Van Halenreleasing ‘Mammoth’debut albumPage 12
Unfamiliar foes set to face off in hockey’s final four ›› NHL playoffs, Page 24
When the last U.S. service member leaves Af-
ghanistan, perhaps by early next month, Amer-
ica’s longest war on foreign soil will end — and
so too a mission initially dubbed Operation En-
during Freedom.
One thing certain to endure from the 20-year
war: advances in battlefield medicine. There,
gains have already taken root.
One-handed tourniquets. Blood transfusions
near the front lines. Faster evacuations to trau-
ma centers. All were implemented in Afghan-
istan, and all saved lives.
This has often been the case during the may-
hem of military combat, which forces doctors to
U.S. Army photo
A flight medic checks to ensure IV fluid is flowing properly to a wounded Afghan National Army soldier during a patient transfer mission at For-ward Operating Base Tagab, Kapisa province, Afghanistan on Nov. 5, 2012.
Enduring lessonsAs war in Afghanistan draws to close, advances in battlefield medicine will carry forward
BY JOHN WILKENS
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SEE LESSONS ON PAGE 6
“There’s hardly a corner oftoday’s health care environmentthat doesn’t trace its roots backto the battlefield.”
Scott McGaugh
San Diego military historian
CARBIS BAY, England —
Leaders of the world’s largest
economies unveiled an infrastruc-
ture plan Saturday for the devel-
oping world to compete with Chi-
na’s global initiatives, but there
was no immediate consensus on
how forcefully to call out Beijing
over human rights abuses.
Citing China
for its forced la-
bor practices is
part of President
Joe Biden’s cam-
paign to per-
suade fellow
democratic lead-
ers to present a
more unified
front to compete economically
with Beijing. But while they
agreed to work toward competing
against China, there was less unity
on how adversarial a public posi-
tion the group should take.
Canada, the United Kingdom
and France largely endorsed Bi-
den’s position, while Germany,
Italy and the European Union
showed more hesitancy during
Saturday’s first session of the
Group of Seven summit, accord-
ing to a senior Biden administra-
tion official. The official who
briefed reporters was not autho-
rized to publicly discuss the pri-
vate meeting and spoke on condi-
tion of anonymity.
Biden held talks with France’s
Emmanuel Macron, who said
cooperation was needed on a
range of issues and told the Amer-
ican president that “it’s great to
have a U.S. president part of the
club and very willing to cooper-
ate.” Relations between the allies
had become strained during the
SEE COMPETE ON PAGE 10
Biden urgesG-7 leadersto competewith China
Associated Press
Biden
PAGE 2 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
BUSINESS/WEATHER
Wall Street closed out a mostly
listless week Friday with a wob-
bly day of trading that helped
nudge the S&P 500 to its third
straight weekly gain.
The benchmark index edged
up 0.2% after spending much of
the day in the red. The small up-
tick was enough to lift the S&P
500 to an all-time high for the
second day in a row.
Technology companies and
banks accounted for much of the
upward move. The gains were
offset by a broad slide in health
care, energy and real estate
stocks. Bond yields were mixed.
With the exception of select
“meme” stocks like GameStop
and AMC Entertainment hyped
by individual investors in online
forums, the broader market was
relatively quiet this week. Inves-
tors remain in wait-and-see
mode ahead of the Federal Re-
serve’s upcoming meeting of pol-
icymakers Wednesday.
Wall Street is keen for clues
about how much of a threat the
central bank deems rising infla-
tion as the economy emerges
from its pandemic-induced re-
cession, and whether the Fed has
begun considering beginning to
taper its support for the econo-
my.
The S&P 500 rose 8.26 points to
4,247.44. The Dow Jones Indus-
trial Average added 13.36 points,
or less than 0.1%, to 34,479.60.
The Nasdaq gained 49.09 points,
or 0.4%, to 14,069.42.
The tech-heavy index also
notched a weekly gain.
Stocks notch modest gains to close out weekAssociated Press
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American Roundup ...... 11Books .......................... 14Comics .........................15Crossword ................... 15Music .......................... 12Opinion ........................ 17Sports .................... 19-24
Military rates
Euro costs (June 14) $1.19Dollar buys (June 14) 0.8018 British pound (June 14) $1.38Japanese yen (June 14) 107.00South Korean won (June 14) 1083.00
Commercial rates
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(Military exchange rates are those availableto customers at military banking facilities in thecountry 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 withyour local military banking facility. Commercialrates are interbank rates provided for referencewhen buying currency. All figures are foreigncurrencies to one dollar, except for the Britishpound, which is represented in dollarstopound, and the euro, which is dollarstoeuro.)
INTEREST RATES
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Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 3
The Pentagon is getting back $2
billion of military construction
funds that were diverted in recent
years by former President Donald
Trump to fund his signature bar-
rier wall efforts on the U.S. south-
ern border, President Joe Biden’s
administration announced Fri-
day.
That money will be returned to
its initial purpose — funding more
than 60 military construction pro-
jects around the world approved
by Congress, according to a state-
ment from the Office of Manage-
ment and Budget. The Pentagon,
under Trump, diverted $3.6 bil-
lion in 2019 that had been ear-
marked to fund 127 military con-
struction projects under a seldom-
used authorization for the Penta-
gon to reroute its Congress-appro-
priated funds.
“The Biden Administration is
committed to properly equipping
American military personnel and
caring for their families,” the
OMB statement read. “No more
money will be diverted for the
purposes of building a border
wall, and [the Defense Depart-
ment] has started canceling all
border barrier projects using the
diverted funds.”
The $3.6 billion — a portion of
the $10 billion that the Pentagon
ultimately contributed to border
wall coffers — was meant to build
about 175 miles of fencing in Tex-
as, Arizona and California, Penta-
gon officials said at the time.
Then-Defense Secretary Mark
Esper and other top defense offi-
cials said they were confident
Congress would reinvest new
money into the construction pro-
jects that lost funding in the shift.
However, Congress never re-ap-
propriated funding to those pro-
jects, which spanned 23 states, 3
U.S. territories and bases in 20
other countries and included a
host of projects from upgraded
training ranges and facilities to
new barracks and schools.
When Biden canceled nearly all
border wall construction in an or-
der issued on his first day in office,
the Pentagon had disbursed about
$5.3 billion of the $10 billion it had
authorized for border wall con-
struction, according to a report
last month by the Congressional
Research Service. The Pentagon
in April announced it would no
longer provide funding for border
wall operations.
The $2.2 billion returning to
military construction will pay for
66 of the projects deferred under
the Trump administration. The
Pentagon said it chose which of
the 127 deferred projects would be
re-funded based on “operational
and component priorities.” A
spokesman did not immediately
respond to a request for specifics
about the projects.
OMB listed five of the projects
as top priorities:
■ $10 million to add two new
anti-ballistic missile ground-
based interceptors at Fort Greely
in Alaska.
■ More than $25 million to
build a 2nd Radio Battalion Com-
plex at the Marine Corps’ Camp
Lejeune in North Carolina.
■ $79 million to build a new
Spangdahlem Elementary School
in Germany, for 600 U.S. military
children.
■ More than $25 million for a
fire/crash rescue station at Tyn-
dall Air Force Base in Florida.
■ More than $9 million for an
upgraded small arms training
range in Indiana for Air National
Guard units.
Trump’s controversial move to
divert the funding was met with
castigation from Democratic law-
makers, some of whom described
the reprogramming effort as a
theft of needed military funds.
Biden has long been critical of
Trump’s border wall efforts and
immediately moved to end con-
struction of as much as he legally
could after his inauguration Jan.
20.
America has the right to secure
its borders, Biden said at the time.
However, “building a massive
wall that spans the entire southern
border is not a serious policy solu-
tion. It is a waste of money that di-
verts attention from genuine
threats to our homeland security.”
During Trump’s time in office,
about 450 miles of border wall
were built, although the vast ma-
jority covered upgrades in areas
where border barrier existed, ac-
cording to the Department of
Homeland Security.
OMB said Friday that the
Trump administration built 52
miles of wall where no border bar-
rier existed. The office estimated
some sections of the wall cost
about $46 million per mile.
“The effort diverted critical re-
sources away from military train-
ing facilities and schools, and
caused serious risks to life, safety,
and the environment,” according
to the Biden OMB statement Fri-
day. “It also took attention away
from genuine security challenges,
like drug smuggling and human
trafficking.”
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has
continued the deployments of ac-
tive-duty and National Guard
troops, authorized by Trump in
2018, to the southern border to
support U.S. Customs and Border
Protection agents. About 3,600
troops are serving on a federal
mission to support border oper-
ations, according to the Pentagon.
Several hundred additional Na-
tional Guard troops are serving
missions authorized by state gov-
ernors at the border.
The federal deployment is au-
thorized through Oct. 1. The
Homeland Security Department
has asked for troops to continue
the federal mission into fiscal year
2022 amid high levels of appre-
hensions along the southwest bor-
der. The Pentagon has yet to re-
veal if it will continue the deploy-
ments.
In May, U.S. Customs and Bor-
der Protection reported more than
180,000 apprehensions of mi-
grants at the border, the largest
monthly total in at least two dec-
ades. The agency reported appre-
hending about 178,000 migrants in
April.
DOD to get back $2.2B diverted to border wallBY COREY DICKSTEIN
Stars and Stripes
Operation Faithful Patriot
Army engineers prepare to place wire on the ArizonaMexico border wall in 2018.
[email protected]: @CDicksteinDC
WASHINGTON — President
Joe Biden will nominate Carlos
Del Toro, a Navy veteran and a
CEO for an engineering and con-
sulting firm, to serve as Navy sec-
retary, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the
chairman of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, said in a
statement Friday.
Del Toro now serves as presi-
dent and CEO of government con-
tractor SBG Technology Solu-
tions, which he founded in 2004,
according to the company’s web-
site. The business, which is based
in Alexandria, Va., specializes in
engineering, cyber security and
information technology modern-
ization and governance.
The nomination comes as the
Navy works to modernize its
force, devoting as much money —
about $22.6 billion — on research
and development efforts as the
service has to
ship procure-
ment in its pro-
posed 2022 bud-
get.
The pick for
the service’s top
civilian leader is
a Naval Acade-
my graduate
who spent 22 years on active duty
in the Navy, according to his biog-
raphy on the academy’s alumni
association website. Del Toro also
spent five years as a civilian em-
ployee for the Navy, including as
senior military assistant to the di-
rector for programs analysis and
evaluation.
During Del Toro’s time in uni-
form, he served as a tactical ac-
tion officer in Operation Desert
Storm and was the first com-
mander of the USS Bulkeley, an
Arleigh Burke-class guided-mis-
sile destroyer, according to his
biography.
In Reed’s statement, he called
Del Toro an “excellent” selection
for Navy secretary.
“He has an impressive resume
and exemplifies so many of the
qualities that make the Navy and
our nation great,” Reed said.
“Carlos rose through the ranks of
the Navy with a distinguished re-
cord of service, leadership and in-
novation.
Del Toro has master’s degrees
in space systems engineering, na-
tional security and strategic stud-
ies and legislative affairs from the
Naval Postgraduate School, the
Naval War College, and The Ge-
orge Washington University, re-
spectively, according to his biog-
raphy on his company’s website.
He has also previously served
as a White House fellow and spe-
cial assistant to the director of the
White House Office of Manage-
ment and Budget, according to his
biography. He also leads the pro-
curement committee in the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce Council
on Small Business.
“As a naval officer, a White
House fellow, entrepreneur, and a
tech CEO, he’s had success at ev-
ery step of his career in both the
military and private sector,” Reed
said in his statement.
If confirmed by Congress, Del
Toro would be the first Navy sec-
retary born in Cuba after immi-
grating to the U.S. with his family
in 1962. He and his wife Betty,
who works as chief financial offi-
cer of his company, live in Mount
Vernon, Va., and have four chil-
dren, according to his biography.
[email protected]: @CaitlinDoornbos
Biden to nominate Navy veteran as naval secretaryBY CAITLIN DOORNBOS
Stars and Stripes
Del Toro
MILITARY
PAGE 4 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
WASHINGTON — The De-
fense Department’s intelligence
agencies are overhauling efforts
to combat foreign influence and
disinformation campaigns in re-
sponse to a request from combat-
ant commanders for help in fight-
ing information attacks from Rus-
sia and China, a Pentagon official
told House lawmakers Friday.
“We need to revamp the train-
ing that we have today to ensure
that people are properly focused
on this issue,” said Ronald Moul-
trie, the Defense Department’s
undersecretary for intelligence
and security.
Moultrie also said the depart-
ment is prioritizing getting infor-
mation out to combatant com-
manders by using open source in-
telligence and declassifying infor-
mation that can be unsealed.
“But, we’re also trying to pro-
tect those sensitive sources and
methods. So, malign influence
and activity in the gray zone …
we’re really focused on it and
within the enterprise — the De-
fense Intelligence Enterprise —
we’re revamping ourselves to be
able to get after this problem,”
Moultrie said during a hearing of
the House Armed Services Com-
mittee subpanel on intelligence
strategies.
The Defense Intelligence En-
terprise are organizations and in-
frastructure related to intelli-
gence, counterintelligence and
security at the Pentagon, the Joint
Staff, the combatant commands
and other parts of the Defense
Department that deal with nation-
al intelligence and security.
In April, POLITICO uncovered
a memo sent from nine of the 11
combatant commanders, plead-
ing for spy agencies to find ways
to declassify and release more in-
formation about bad behavior
from Russia and China.
“We request this help to better
enable the U.S., and by extension
its allies and partners, to win
without fighting, to fight now in
so-called gray zones, and to sup-
ply ammunition in the ongoing
war of narratives,” the command-
ers wrote in January to then-act-
ing Director of National Intelli-
gence Joseph Maguire, according
to POLITICO.
Russia and China have been us-
ing “gray zone” tactics, or nonmil-
itary actions, such as election
meddling to compete against the
United States.
In April, the Office of the Direc-
tor of National Intelligence an-
nounced the establishment of a
new center tasked with tracking
overseas efforts to wage disinfor-
mation and influence campaigns
in the United States.
ODNI said the center “will be
focused on coordinating and inte-
grating intelligence pertaining to
malign influence, drawing togeth-
er relevant and diverse expertise
to better understand and monitor
the challenge,” according to
media reports when the center
was announced.
Intelligence officials have in-
creasingly raised alarm over the
threat of foreign efforts to inter-
fere in the U.S. elections, espe-
cially after Russia in 2016 waged a
campaign to discredit Democrat-
ic presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton. Moscow also targeted the
U.S. midterm elections in 2018
and the 2020 presidential elec-
tion, according to assessments
from the National Intelligence
Council.
The discussion in the House on
Friday came after Rep. Ruben
Gallego, D-Ariz., chairman of the
subcommittee on intelligence and
special operations, raised the is-
sues described in the POLITICO
report. He asked Moultrie to ex-
plain how his office is working
across the defense intelligence
community to ensure coordina-
tion to combat the information
war against China and Russia.
Gen. Paul Nakasone, director of
the National Security Agency,
said a lot of the work at the agency
is “written for release,” however
that’s not the “end all.”
“The end all is, as we take a look
at that, working with a specific
combatant commander, looking
at the private sector, looking at
the tools and the information
available. How do we do this in
the quickest manner possible,”
Nakasone said.
Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director
of the Defense Intelligence Agen-
cy, said the agency is ensuring
analysts write reports with the
mindset that “this product will be
released to the max level of audi-
ence or consumer.”
While it’s a good start, Berrier
said those who are collecting
sources and developing informa-
tion reports are writing at the low-
est classification level possible
when they can.
DOD intelligenceworking to fightforeign influence
BY SARAH CAMMARATA
Stars and Stripes
[email protected]: @sarahjcamm
MILITARY
KABUL, Afghanistan — The
U.S. Embassy here is halting all vi-
sa operations in response to a
spike in coronavirus cases, adding
to growing concerns among Af-
ghans who worked for the U.S.
government that they won’t be
able to emigrate to the U.S. before
foreign forces fully withdraw.
The indefinite suspension starts
Sunday, the embassy said in a
statement Friday.
The move comes amid a deadly
third wave of the coronavirus
throughout Afghanistan that has
claimed the life of one embassy
worker. More than 3,400 people
have died from the virus in the
country since the pandemic began
last year.
“We acknowledge and regret
the inconvenience to applicants as
we seek to protect the health of our
staff and applicants to ensure we
can fully support visa and other
consular services going forward,”
the statement said.
Those who had appointments
scheduled for the coming days
will be able to reschedule as soon
as visa operations resume, the em-
bassy said. No expected resump-
tion date was given.
The withdrawal of American
troops and military equipment
from Afghanistan is more than
halfway finished, U.S. Central
Command said lastweek. In April,
President Joe Biden announced
that all foreign forces would be out
of the country by Sept. 11, but U.S.
and NATO officials have since
said the pullout could be complet-
ed as early as next month.
As the withdrawal progresses,
the State Department has been
working to process a backlog of
some 18,000 Afghan special immi-
grant visa applications that were
held up last year because of the
pandemic.
The SIV program allows Af-
ghans who worked for the U.S.
government, their spouses and
their children, to emigrate to the
U.S. Many of the applicants, which
include military translators, are
said to be at great personal risk for
supporting the international coali-
tion.
“I don’t think it’s a good decision
by the embassy to suspend the vi-
sa process now,” an SIV applicant
in the eastern city of Jalalabad,
who asked to remain anonymous
for security reasons, told Stars
and Stripes.
The applicant said he lost his
finger during a bomb blast while
translating for American forces
several years ago, and that the Ta-
liban have since issued a state-
ment accusing him of being a spy
for Washington and calling for his
arrest.
“We’re facing huge threats al-
ready,” the man said in a tele-
phone interview Saturday, refer-
ring to SIV applicants. “And we
think it will be even worse for us
once foreign forces leave. We are
calling on the U.S. to speed up the
[visa] process.”
Similar sentiment has been
echoed in Washington.
Following news of the imminent
suspension of visa operations,
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas,
the ranking member of the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, called
on Biden to consider using hu-
manitarian parole for SIV appli-
cants, who he described as having
“a bullseye on their backs.”
Humanitarian parole allows
temporary entry into the United
States in emergency situations to
those who would otherwise be not
be granted entry.
“The health and safety of our
diplomatic personnel is a high pri-
ority for me,” McCaul said in a
statement Friday. “But suspend-
ing visa operations at the U.S. Em-
bassy in Kabul at this critical junc-
ture only further exacerbates the
situation for those awaiting their
Special Immigrant Visas.”
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group
of senators introduced a bill Fri-
day that would add 20,000 visas to
the SIV program — nearly double
the number Congress has autho-
rized since 2014 — and make ap-
plying for them easier.
“This legislation would make
important updates to the Afghan
Special Immigrant Visa program
to help more vulnerable aides and
their families escape before it is
too late,” Roger Wicker, R-Miss.,
one of the senators who intro-
duced the bill, said in a statement.
“The U.S. owes these courageous
men and women a debt of grati-
tude — we cannot leave them be-
hind.”
Afghanistan’s Health Ministry
said last week that it expected cor-
onavirus cases to hit their peak in
the country within the next four
weeks.
PHILLIP WALTER WELLMAN/Stars and Stripes
Workers in Kabul, Afghanistan, spray disinfectant to combat the coronavirus in March 2020. The countryis now suffering from a third wave of the pandemic.
US Embassy in Kabul halts visaservices as COVID cases surge
BY PHILLIP WALTER
WELLMAN
Stars and Stripes
[email protected]: @pwwellman
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 5
WASHINGTON — The DefenseDepartment on Friday announceda new $150 million security aidpackage for Ukraine to supportthe country’s border security andterritorial integrity to help thwartRussian expansionism.
The Ukraine Security Assist-ance Initiative package includescounter-artillery radars, counter-unmanned aerial systems, secure
communications gear, electronicwarfare capabilities, militarymedical evacuation equipmentand training and equipment “toimprove the operational safetyand capacity of Ukrainian AirForce bases,” the Pentagon said ina statement. It complements a$125 million package announcedin March that included two MarkIV patrol boats, tactical gear, ra-dars and other equipment to im-prove command and control capa-
bilities, medical treatment andcombat evacuation.
The $150 million package wasawarded after the Pentagon andState Department certified Uk-raine had made “sufficient pro-gress on defense reforms thisyear, as required by the 2020 Na-tional Defense AuthorizationAct,” which sets spending priori-ties for the Defense Department,according to the statement.
“The department continues to
encourage Ukraine to enact re-forms that are in line with NATOprinciples and standards to ad-vance its Euro-Atlantic aspira-tions,” chief Pentagon spokesmanJohn Kirby told reporters on Fri-day.
Since 2014, the U.S. has givenUkraine more than $2.5 billion insecurity assistance, according tothe statement.
“[The U.S.] will continue tostrengthen our strategic defense
partnership, including throughthe provision of defensive lethalassistance,” the Pentagon said.“The United States will also con-tinue to assist Ukraine with theimplementation of these reformsto advance its Euro-Atlantic aspi-rations in support of a secure,prosperous, democratic and freeUkraine.”
US awards $150M in security aid to Ukraine
[email protected] Twitter: @CaitlinDoornbos
BY CAITLIN DOORNBOS
Stars and Stripes
The Pentagon announced Rob-inson’s death Thursday but did notrelease his name until Friday afterhis next-of-kin had been notified.
Robinson was the second Loui-siana Army National Guard sol-dier to die this week in separatenoncombat-related incidents sup-porting Operation Inherent Re-
WASHINGTON — A secondNational Guard soldier from Loui-siana died this week in a noncom-bat incident supporting OperationInherent Resolve, the DefenseDepartment announced Friday.
Spc. Joshua S. Robinson, a 22-
year-old from Baton Rouge, La.,died Thursday at Camp Buehring,Kuwait, as the result of an undis-closed noncombat-related inci-dent that is under investigation,the Pentagon said in a statement.
Robinson was assigned to the3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Re-giment in Lake Charles, La.
solve. First Sgt. Casey J. Hart died
Monday at Walter Reed NationalMilitary Medical Center in Be-thesda, Md., as a result of a non-combat-related incident May 9 atthe al-Tanf garrison in Syria,which is about 155 miles east ofDamascus, according to a Defense
Department statement Thursday. Hart of Baton Rouge, La., was
assigned to the Louisiana NationalGuard’s 256th Infantry BrigadeCombat Team, according to thestatement.
The incident that led to Hart’sdeath is also under investigation,the Pentagon said Thursday.
Second soldier with Louisiana National Guard dies this weekBY CAITLIN DOORNBOS
Stars and Stripes
performance maintenance goals.If the company completed 95% ofroutine maintenance requestswithin three business days on aquarterly basis, it was eligible fora performance incentive fee, ac-cording to court documents.
Cunefare and others conspiredto manipulate and falsify informa-tion in maintenance reports from2013 to 2015 so that the reports fal-sely reflected the company hadmet maintenance goals, when ithad not, according to court docu-ments. The documents did notname the other conspirators butstated that Cunefare gave writtenand oral instructions to communi-ty managers and others.
Cabrera acted on instructionsfrom Cunefare and others to com-mit similar fraud between 2013 to2016, while serving as BalfourBeatty’s community manager atLackland Air Force Base. Shepleaded guilty to conspiracy April
Two former employees of a pri-vate company that manages mili-tary family housing pleaded guiltyto major fraud and conspiracy forlying to the Air Force about main-tenance performed in on-basehousing to receive $3.5 million inunearned financial incentives, theJustice Department announcedWednesday.
Rick Cunefare, 61, of Glendale,Ariz., and Stacy M. Cabrera, 47, ofConverse, Texas, worked as man-agers for Balfour Beatty Commu-nities and pleaded guilty for ac-tions between 2013 and 2016. TheJustice Department did not nameBalfour Beatty in its announce-ment, but the company confirmedit employed the two.
Both were part of a scheme toalter maintenance records to ap-pear as though Balfour Beatty wasmeeting goals required for finan-
cial bonuses from the Air Forcewhen it was not, according to courtrecords.
“The defendants defrauded theU.S. Air Force and put corporateprofits ahead of the well-being ofservice members and their fam-ilies,” said Acting Assistant Attor-ney General Nicholas L. McQuaidof the Justice Department’s Crim-inal Division. “The department iscommitted to protecting our mili-tary families from deceit and mis-treatment and ensuring the integ-rity of Department of Defenseprograms.”
Over the past two years, reportsof dangerous in conditions in mil-itary family housing have madeheadlines and led Congress topass reforms to improve homes.There have also been about a doz-en lawsuits filed against privatehousing companies, includingBalfour Beatty, that allege thecompanies were slow to perform
maintenance, which exacerbatedconditions including water leaks,sewage issues and exposure tolead paint, asbestos and pest infes-tations.
Cunefare, who pleaded guilty tomajor fraud against the UnitedStates on June 9, was a regionalmanager who directly supervisedcommunity managers for militaryfamily housing at Lackland AirForce Base, Texas; Travis andVandenberg Air Force bases inCalifornia; Tinker Air Force Base,Okla.; and Fairchild Air ForceBase, Wash., according to the de-partment. He reviewed and ap-proved quarterly maintenance re-ports and ensured that the data inthe reports were submitted to theAir Force with performance in-centive fee request letters.
As outlined in Balfour Beatty’scontract with the Air Force, reve-nue for management of the hous-ing is based, in part, on meeting
21. She personally, and through
subordinates acting on her in-structions, falsified maintenancerecords to generate quarterlymaintenance reports to reflectthat the company had met mainte-nance-related performance goals,according to court documents.Those false reports moved on toother managers, who then know-ingly used them to substantiateBalfour Beatty’s bonus requests.
Both await sentencing in feder-al district court. Cunefare faces amaximum penalty of 10 years inprison and a $250,000 fine. Cabre-ra faces up to five years in prisonand a $250,000 fine.
Balfour Beatty manages familyhousing at 21 Air Force bases and34 Army and Navy bases through-out the United States.
Two former military family housing employees plead guilty to fraudBY ROSE L. THAYER
Stars and Stripes
[email protected]: @Rose_Lori
MILITARY
LAS VEGAS — A civilian pilotkilled when a Dassault Mirage F-1crashed last month near Nellis AirForce Base reported a flight emer-gency and ejected moments beforethe jet slammed to the ground andburst into flames, federal crash in-vestigators reported Friday.
No one on the ground was in-jured in the May 24 crash in north-east Las Vegas, where a witnesstold the National TransportationSafety Board he saw the jet ap-
proach low toward a runway andthen “falling out of the sky” whilethe pilot ejected.
The preliminary NTSB reportdid not identify pilot NicholasHunter Hamilton, 43, of Las Ve-gas, or provide details about hisdeath. A final report is expected inseveral months.
Hamilton retired after 20 yearsas a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot andwas employed by Draken Interna-tional, a military contractor thatprovides tactical aircraft and pi-
lots for combat training at Nellisand other sites.
The crash occurred while Ha-milton returned to the base follow-ing weapons school support flightsover the vast Nevada Test andTraining Range.
In his final turn toward Nellis, hereported a “flap issue” and thendeclared an emergency, the NTSBreport said.
The aircraft missed homes andcrashed into two backyards about1½ miles from the runway.
NTSB: Military contractor pilothad emergency, ejected in crash
Associated Press
L.E. BASKOW/AP
Military personnel, officers and officials investigate an airplane crashnear Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas on May 24.
PAGE 6 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
improvise, and quickly. The advances they
make then spread to civilian health care.
Anesthesia has ties to the Civil War. World
War I brought the first widespread use of X-
rays. World War II was a proving ground for
blood banks and antibiotics. Medical evac-
uation by helicopter started in the Korean
War.
“These changes happen because there is a
profound need, and because the injuries are
of a scale, unfortunately, where you have
enough cases to pioneer a technique and
enough evidence to show that it works,” said
Scott McGaugh, a San Diego military histo-
rian. “There’s hardly a corner of today’s
health-care environment that doesn’t trace
its roots back to the battlefield,”
McGaugh, author of “Battlefield Angels,”
a 2011 book about combat medics, said Af-
ghanistan, where catastrophic injuries were
caused by roadside bombs and other impro-
vised explosives, necessitated a significant
change.
“In the last century, the whole notion was
to get the wounded off the battlefield as
quickly as possible,” he said. “This century,
there’s a heavy emphasis on taking trauma
care to the battlefield.”
The result is that war has never been more
survivable. During the Revolutionary War,
about 40%of the seriously wounded eventu-
ally died. In World War II, about 30 percent
did.
In Afghanistan, what had been a 20% fa-
tality rate in the early years of the war was
reduced to 8.6% by the later stages.
“The only winner in war,” an old saying
goes, “is medicine.”
A new twistTourniquets to stem blood loss are an-
cient. They date at least to the reign of Alex-
ander the Great and his invasion of Persia in
around 334 B.C.
But they haven’t always been recom-
mended. Dr. Matthew Tadlock, a Navy trau-
ma specialist in San Diego, remembers be-
ing taught in medical school more than 20
years ago that “tourniquets are bad and
shouldn’t be used.”
That’s because studies showed that the
devices could cause nerve damage and
might lead to amputations, according to Jef-
frey Howard, who has studied their use and
is an assistant professor of public health at
the University of Texas at San Antonio.
At the Afghanistan war’s outset, tourni-
quets were not widely used. “But once we
got in there,” Howard said, “we learned
pretty quickly: We need these.”
Many of the injuries were from bomb
blasts, which sometimes injured or severed
more than one limb. People were bleeding to
death.
Old-fashioned tourniquets needed two
people to apply them tightly enough. The
ones designed for Afghanistan could be ap-
plied by one person— applied one-handed
by injured service members to themselves.
“That was a significant improvement, de-
signing a self-applied tourniquet,” Howard
said. “And they’re lightweight, easier to car-
ry.”
Those devices only work on the extremi-
ties, though, and sometimes the IEDs were
so powerful they severed limbs at the hip or
the shoulder. A new kind of “junctional tour-
niquet” had to be created, too, Howard said.
A study he did with several collaborators
showed that the improved effectiveness and
availability of tourniquets prevented an es-
timated 240 deaths in Afghanistan. (About
2,300 U.S. troops were killed in action in the
war, with another 20,000 injured.)
Tadlock, the trauma surgeon, called tour-
niquets — which had played a key role in
World War II, when about 50% of those
killed in action bled to death — “a lesson that
we had to re-learn.” That’s not uncommon in
war. Institutional memory fades sometimes
after the bullets stop flying.
But the success in Afghanistan and Iraq
has already spread to the civilian world,
where a non-profit initiative called “Stop the
Bleed” offers training and equipment to
help first-responders and the public inter-
vene if they come across someone who is se-
verely wounded.
Administered by the American College of
Surgeons, the program has trained 1.5 mil-
lion people since it started in 2017. The goal:
200 million trained.
Timing is everythingIt’s called “The Golden Hour.” Get a se-
verely injured patient into the hands of sur-
geons within 60 minutes and the odds of sur-
vival go up.
Easier said than done in a place like Af-
ghanistan, where troops often fought in ru-
ral areas, down dirt roads. Helicopters usu-
ally had to be called in for evacuations.
Early on, the “Golden Hour” became two
hours or more because of the logistics. That
was about what the lag-time was during the
Vietnam War, and a lot better than it was
during World War II, when the average time
from injury to hospitalization was 12 to 15
hours.
In 2009, Defense Secretary Robert Gates
ordered troop leaders to improve the re-
sponse time, and they did so by bringing in
more transport helicopters. Less than 20%
of the casualties had gotten to the hospital in
the Golden Hour during the war’s initial
years. After his directive, the number went
up to 76%.
Howard, the University of Texas epide-
miologist, said that intervention likely saved
almost 280 lives in Afghanistan.
He and his collaborators also studied the
role of blood transfusions on mortality. It
used to be that medics would give the
wounded saline or other IV fluids to main-
tain blood pressure while they were trans-
ported to a hospital. Once there, they would
get blood products as needed.
The nature of the wounds in Afghanistan
quickly made it clear that blood was needed
at the point of injury. But blood is tricky to
work with. especially whole blood, which re-
quires refrigeration. New techniques in-
volving blood component therapy, and
equipment for storing and transporting it,
were put into place.
Howard’s study showed that quicker
blood-transfusions probably saved an esti-
mated 431 lives in Afghanistan.
Those results are also spreading into the
civilian world, with more emergency crews
on ambulances carrying blood products
now.
Feeling luckyThe Afghanistan war has gone on so long
it’s had several “signature” wounds. Ampu-
tations. Traumatic brain injuries. Post-trau-
matic stress disorder.
Amputations are the most visible. There
have been about 1,650 of them from injuries
suffered in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
since 2001.
Many service members have lost more
than one limb; some have lost all four. When
one amputee missing her left leg was inter-
viewed by Stars and Stripes four years ago,
she said one of the things motivating her re-
covery was her gratitude.
“I had lost only one limb,” she said. “I felt
lucky.”
In the same article, a Marine bomb tech-
nician who lost his right hand to an IED said
the caregivers at the Walter Reed military
hospital had jokingly given him a nickname:
“Paper Cut.” He was the least injured per-
son there.
The steady stream of patients at military
medical centers has also spurred improve-
ments in prosthetics, which are lighter and
more functional now. And, increasingly,
more gender-sensitive.
The VA has long treated female depend-
ents for artificial limbs needed because of
diabetes and other health conditions, but not
for battlefield trauma.
“That really became a bigger question in
Iraq and Afghanistan, where more women
were deployed in all kinds of roles,” said Lo-
ry Manning, a retired Navy captain and di-
rector of government operations for the Ser-
vice Women’s Action Network, based in
Washington, D.C.
She said more than 100 women are combat
amputees, about 3% of those who have lost
limbs, and the Veterans Health Administra-
tion has become increasingly sensitive to
their needs.
The agency has funded eight studies since
2017, looking, for example, at whether a foot-
ankle system can be developed that would
allow an amputee to wear high heels.
“Many women like to wear high heels at
least some of the time,” Manning said.
They’re also more likely to go bare-armed
and bare-legged in public, she said, and that
has implications for how the prostheses
look.
Women amputees interviewed for a Gov-
ernment Accounting Office report issued
last November told a familiar story: the mil-
itary is ahead of the wider world when it
comes to what is available in prostheses.
If the past is any prologue, that will prob-
ably change.
“Stop for a moment,” said McGaugh, the
military historian, “and think about how
much health care has been pioneered and
validated during the different wars. Who
knows what lessons learned in the Middle
East will become part of standard care for ci-
vilians?”
Lessons: Emphasis turns to taking trauma care to battlefieldFROM PAGE 1
RUSSELL GAMACHE/U.S. Army
Soldiers attending the TC 8800 MEDIC refresher Table VIII skill validation course at the Fort McCoy Medical Simulation TrainingCenter receive training on how to apply a combat application tourniquet and apply a pressure dressing to an open wound.
MILITARY
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 7
KABUL, Afghanistan — Just
running errands in the mainly
Hazara neighborhoods of west
Kabul can be dangerous. One day
last week, Adila Khiari and her
two daughters went out to buy new
curtains. Soon after, her son heard
that a minibus had been bombed
— the fourth to be blown up in just
48 hours.
When his mother didn’t answer
her phone, he frantically searched
hospitals in the Afghan capital. He
found his sister Hosnia in critical
condition with burns over 50% of
her body. Then he found his moth-
er and other sister, Mina, both
dead. Three days later, Hosnia
died as well.
In all, 18 people were killed in
the two-day string of bombings
against minivans in Kabul’s
Dasht-e-Barchi district. It was the
latest in a vicious campaign of vio-
lence targeting Afghanistan’s mi-
nority Hazara community — one
that Hazaras fear will only get
worse after the final withdrawal of
American and NATO troops this
summer.
Intentionally targetedHundreds of Afghans are killed
or injured every month in violence
connected to the country’s con-
stant war. But Hazaras, who make
up around 9% of the population of
36 million people, stand alone in
being intentionally targeted be-
cause of their ethnicity — distinct
from the other ethnic groups, such
as Tajik and Uzbek and the Pash-
tun majority — and their religion.
Most Hazaras are Shiite Muslims,
despised by Sunni Muslim radi-
cals like Islamic State, and dis-
criminated against by many in the
Sunni majority country.
After the collapse of the Taliban
20 years ago, the Hazaras em-
braced hopes for a new democra-
cy in Afghanistan. Long the coun-
try’s poorest community, they be-
gan to improve their lot, advanc-
ing in various fields, including
education and sports.
Now many Hazaras are moving
to take up arms to protect them-
selves in what they expect will be a
war for control among Afghanis-
tan’s many factions.
Inside the Nabi Rasool Akram
Mosque compound, protected by
sandbags stacked against its or-
nate doors and 10-foot high walls,
Qatradullah Broman was among
the Hazaras attending the funeral
of Adila and Mina this week.
The government doesn’t care
about Hazaras and has failed to
protect them, he said. “Anyone
who can afford to leave, they are
leaving. Those who can’t are stay-
ing here to die,” said Broman. “I
see a very dark future for our peo-
ple.”
Much to fearThere is plenty for Hazaras to
fear.
Since it emerged in 2014 and
2015, a vicious Islamic State affil-
iate has declared war on Afghan-
istan’s Shiites and has claimed re-
sponsibility for many of the recent
attacks on the Hazaras.
But Hazaras are also deeply
suspicious of the government for
not protecting them. Some worry
that government-linked warlords,
who also demonize their commu-
nity, are behind some of the at-
tacks.
Former government adviser
Torek Farhadi told The Associat-
ed Press that within the political
leadership, “from the top down,”
there is a “sorry culture” of dis-
crimination against Hazaras.
“The government, in a cynical cal-
culation, has decided Hazara lives
are cheap,” he said.
Since 2015, attacks have killed
at least 1,200 Hazaras and injured
another 2,300, according to Wa-
dood Pedram, executive director
of the Kabul-based Human Rights
and Eradication of Violence Orga-
nization.
Hazaras have been preyed on at
schools, weddings, mosques,
sports clubs, even at birth.
Last year, gunmen attacked a
maternity hospital in the mainly
Hazara districts of west Kabul.
When the shooting ended, 24 peo-
ple were dead, including new-
borns and their mothers. Last
month, a triple bombing at the
Syed Al-Shahada school in the
same area killed nearly 100 peo-
ple, mostly Hazara schoolgirls.
Last week, when militants at-
tacked a compound of de-mining
workers, shooting and killing at
least 10, witnesses said the attack-
ers tried to pick Hazaras out of the
workers to kill.
Some of these attacks, deliber-
ately targeting civilians, hospitals
and children, could rise to the lev-
el of war crimes, said Patricia
Gossman, associate director for
Asia at Human Rights Watch.
Pedram’s organization has pet-
itioned the U.N. Human Rights
Commission to investigate the
killing of Hazaras as genocide or a
crime against humanity. It and
other rights groups also helped the
International Criminal Court in
2019 compile suspected war
crimes cases in Afghanistan.
“The world doesn’t speak about
our deaths. The world is silent.
Are we not human?” said Mustafa
Waheed, an elderly Hazara weep-
ing at the burial of Mina and her
mother.
A black velvet cloth inscribed in
gold with Quranic verses was
draped over the two bodies. Fam-
ily and friends carried them on
wooden beds, then placed them in-
side the graves. Mina’s father fell
to the ground crying.
“The U.S. can go into space, but
they can’t find out who is doing
this?” Waheed said. “They can see
an ant move from space, but they
can’t see who is killing Hazaras?”
Arming youthIn the face of the killings, talk
has turned to arming Hazara
youth to defend the community,
particularly in the districts that
the community dominates in west-
ern Kabul. Some Hazaras say the
May 8 attack on the Syed al-Sha-
hada school was a turning point.
It is a significant reversal for a
community that showed such
hope in a new Afghanistan. After
the fall of the Taliban, many Haz-
ara militias gave up their weapons
under a government disarmament
program, even as other factions
were reluctant.
“We used to think the pen and
the book were our greatest weap-
on, but now we realize it is the gun
we need,” said Ghulam Reza Ber-
ati, a prominent Hazara religious
leader. Fathers of the girls killed
in the school attack are being told
to invest in weapons, said Berati,
who helped bury many of the girls.
Sitting on the carpets of west
Kabul’s Wali Asar Mosque, Berati
said Hazaras are disappointed in
the democracy brought by the
U.S.-led coalition. Hazaras have
largely been excluded from posi-
tions of prominence, he said.
Hazaras worry about contin-
uing ISIS attacks and about the po-
tential return of the Taliban to
power after the American with-
drawal. But they also worry about
the many heavily armed warlords
who are part of the government.
Some of them carried out violence
against Hazaras in the past, and
Hazaras fear they will do so again
if post-withdrawal Afghanistan
slides into a repeat of the brutal in-
ter-factional civil war of the early
1990s.
One warlord who is still promi-
nent in Kabul, Abdul Rasool Say-
yaf, led a Pashtun militia that mas-
sacred Hazara civilians during a
ferocious 1993 battle with Hazara
militias in Kabul’s mainly Hazara
neighborhood of Afshar.
Rajab Ali Urzgani became a sort
of folk hero in his community as
one of the youngest Hazara com-
manders during the Battle of Af-
shar — only 14 at the time.
Now 41 and still known by his
nom de guerre,
Mangol, he re-
turned to Afshar
earlier this
month with the
AP to visit the
site. He stopped
to give a prayer
for the dead at a
mass grave
where nearly 80 men, women and
children were killed in the blood-
shed are buried. A black Shiite
banner flies at the entrance.
Mangol held out little hope for
peace in Afghanistan following
the U.S. and NATO withdrawal.
“When the foreigners with-
draw, the war will happen
1,000%,” he said.
“The war will happen like in the
past with the different groups, and
we will defend our family and our
dignity.”
Running errandscan be deadly forAfghan Hazaras
BY KATHY GANNON
Associated Press
PHOTOS BY RAHMAT GUL/AP
Afghan Hazaras on June 5 attend the funeral of Mina Khiari, who was killed in a bombing, in Kabul, Afghanistan.
“We used tothink the penand the bookwere ourgreatestweapon, butnow we realize itis the gun weneed.”
Ghulam Reza Berati
Hazara religious leader
Mangol
An Afghan school student is treated at a hospital May 8 after a bombexplosion near a school west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The triplebombing of the SyedAlShahada girls school killed more than 100,nearly 80 of them Hazara students.
WAR ON TERRORISM
PAGE 8 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
NATION
WASHINGTON — The Justice
Department’s internal watchdog
launched an investigation Friday
after revelations that former
President Donald Trump’s ad-
ministration secretly seized
phone data from at least two
House Democrats as part of an
aggressive leaks probe. Demo-
crats called the seizures “harrow-
ing” and an abuse of power.
The announcement by Inspec-
tor General Michael Horowitz
came shortly after Deputy Attor-
ney General Lisa Monaco made
the request for an internal investi-
gation. Horowitz said he would
examine whether the data sub-
poenaed by the Justice Depart-
ment and turned over by Apple
followed department policy and
“whether any such uses, or the in-
vestigations, were based upon im-
proper considerations.”
Horowitz said he would also in-
vestigate similar Trump-era sei-
zures of journalists’ phone re-
cords.
House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.,
and another Democratic member
of the panel, California Rep. Eric
Swalwell, said Apple notified
them last month that their meta-
data had been subpoenaed and
turned over to the Justice Depart-
ment in 2018, as their committee
was investigating the former
president’s ties to Russia. Schiff
was then the top Democrat on the
panel, which was led by Repub-
licans.
While the Justice Department
routinely investigates leaked in-
formation, including classified in-
telligence, subpoenaing the pri-
vate information of members of
Congress is extraordinarily rare.
The disclosures, first reported by
The New York Times, raise ques-
tions about what the Justice De-
partment’s justification was for
spying on another branch of gov-
ernment and whether it was done
for political reasons.
In a statement, White House
deputy press secretary Andrew
Bates said the Trump administra-
tion’s conduct is “shocking” and
“clearly fits within an appalling
trend that represents the opposite
of how authority should be used.”
Bates said one of President Joe
Biden’s top reasons for seeking
the presidency was “his prede-
cessor’s unjustifiable abuses of
power, including the repugnant
ways he tried to force his political
interests upon the Department of
Justice.”
The Trump administration’s se-
cretive move to gain access to the
data came as the president was
fuming publicly and privately
over investigations — in Congress
and by then-special counsel Rob-
ert Mueller — into his campaign’s
ties to Russia. Trump called the
probes a “witch hunt,” regularly
criticized Democrats and Mueller
on Twitter and dismissed as “fake
news” leaks he found harmful to
his agenda. As the investigations
swirled around him, he demand-
ed loyalty from a Justice Depart-
ment he often regarded as his per-
sonal law firm.
Swalwell and Schiff were two of
the most visible Democrats on the
committee during the Russia
probe, making frequent appear-
ances on cable news. Trump
watched those channels closely, if
not obsessively, and seethed over
the coverage.
Schiff said the seizures suggest
“the weaponization of law en-
forcement by a corrupt presi-
dent” and urged the Justice De-
partment to do “a full damage as-
sessment of the conduct of the de-
partment over the last four
years.”
Senate Democratic leaders im-
mediately demanded that former
Attorneys General Bill Barr and
Jeff Sessions, who both oversaw
Trump’s leak probes, testify
about the secret subpoenas. Sen-
ate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer and Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Dick Dur-
bin said in a statement that “this
appalling politicization of the De-
partment of Justice by Donald
Trump and his sycophants” must
be investigated. They said Barr
and Sessions are subject to a sub-
poena if they refuse.
Trump seizures of Dems’ data investigatedAssociated Press
WASHINGTON — The Justice
Department will scrutinize a
wave of new laws in Republican-
controlled states that tighten vot-
ing rules, Attorney General Mer-
rick Garland said Friday, vowing
to take action on any violations of
federal law.
He announced plans to double
staffing within the department’s
civil rights division and said the
department would send guidance
to states about election-related ac-
tivity, including mail voting and
post-election audits. He also
pledged to investigate and prose-
cute those who would threaten
election workers, noting a rise in
such cases.
“There are many things open to
debate in America, but the right of
all eligible citizens to vote is not
one of them,” Garland said in his
first direct response to the restric-
tive voting laws being passed in
more than a dozen states where
Republicans control the legisla-
ture and governor’s office.
Speaking to staff of the agency’s
civil rights division, he said the re-
sources of the Justice Department
must be rededicated to “meet the
challenge of the current mo-
ment.”
His message was clear: The de-
partment doesn’t plan to stay on
the sidelines of the voting battles
that have erupted in statehouses
across the country. Along with re-
viewing new state laws, Garland
said the department also will ex-
amine existing ones for their po-
tential to discriminate against mi-
nority voters.
He also reiterated the adminis-
tration’s support for two proposals
pushed by congressional Demo-
crats that would create minimum
federal standards for voting and
would restore the ability of his
agency to review changes to state
election laws in places with a his-
tory of racial discrimination. A
2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision
effectively set aside this “preclea-
rance” requirement, and Demo-
crats say it has resulted in a prolif-
eration of restrictive voting laws
in recent years.
Garland said false claims of vot-
er fraud were being used to justify
the new voting restrictions de-
spite law enforcement and intelli-
gence agencies having refuted
those claims. He expressed con-
cern that disinformation sur-
rounding the 2020 election was
fueling “abnormal post-election
audit methodologies” to conduct
partisan ballot reviews, like the
one underway in Arizona.
Seven months after the election,
former President Donald Trump
continues to falsely insist that he
won and demand that states inves-
tigate his unsubstantiated claims
of voter fraud. Those claims have
been resoundingly rejected by
state officials who certified the re-
sults, judges who dismissed mul-
tiple lawsuits filed by Trump and
his allies, and a coalition of federal
and state officials who called the
2020 election the “most secure” in
U.S. history.
Trump’s own attorney general
said at the time there was no evi-
dence of widespread fraud that
would change the outcome.
Justice Department will review restrictiveRepublican voting laws
Associated Press
In Tennessee and North Carolina,
demand for the COVID-19 vaccine
has slowed down so much that they
have given millions of doses back to
the federal government, even though
less than half of their total popula-
tions are vaccinated.
Oklahoma has not asked for new
doses from the government for more
than a month, spurning its 200,000-a-
week allotment. Around the country,
states are rushing to use up doses be-
fore they expire this summer.
The U.S. is confronted with an ev-
er-growing surplus of coronavirus
vaccine, looming expiration dates
and stubbornly lagging demand at a
time when the developing world is
clamoring for doses to stem a rise in
infections.
Million-dollar prizes, free beer
and marijuana, raffled-off hunting
rifles and countless other giveaways
around the country have failed to sig-
nificantly move the needle on vac-
cine hesitancy, raising the specter of
new outbreaks.
The stockpiles are becoming more
daunting each week. Oklahoma has
more than 700,000 doses on shelves
but is administering only 4,500 a day
and has 27,000 Pfizer and Moderna
doses that are set to expire at the end
of the month.
Millions of Johnson & Johnson
doses nationwide were set to expire
this month before the government
extended their dates by six weeks,
but some leaders acknowledge it will
be difficult to use them up even by
then.
“We really cannot let doses expire.
That would be a real outrage, given
the need to get vaccines to some un-
der-vaccinated communities in the
U.S. and the glaring gap in vaccina-
tions and the inequity of vaccinations
that we have globally,” said Dr. Kir-
sten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of epi-
demiology and biostatistics at the
University of California, San Fran-
cisco.
The U.S. averaged about 870,000
new injections per day at the end of
last week, down sharply from a high
of about 3.3 million a day on average
in mid-April, according to the Cen-
ters for Disease Control and Preven-
tion.
DENISE CATHEY, THE BROWNSVILLE HERALD/ AP
Jose Espronseda looks away as Brownsville Fire Department fire inspector Amanda Ely administers hissecond dose of the Moderna COVID19 vaccine in Brownsville, Texas, on Friday.
US vaccine surplus continues togrow as expiration dates loom
Associated Press
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 9
NATION
WASHINGTON — Faced with a
#MeToo reckoning, the FBI says
it is getting serious about sexual
harassment in its ranks, starting a
24/7 tip line, doing more to help
accusers and taking a tougher
stand against agents found to have
committed misconduct.
The changes follow Associated
Press reporting last year that
found a series of sexual assault
and harassment allegations
against senior officials who were
allowed to quietly avoid discipline
and retire or transfer even after
the claims were substantiated.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Ab-
bate told the AP that the bureau is
sending its strongest message ev-
er that employees who are tempt-
ed to engage in sexual misconduct
should be scared because if they
do so, “we’re coming for them.”
“That’s a strong approach, a
forceful shift and we mean it. And
it’s coming from the top,” Abbate
said. “Individuals who engage in
this type of misconduct don’t be-
long in the FBI and they certainly
should not have supervisory over-
sight of others. Period.”
Among the changes FBI offi-
cials detailed to AP in a series of
recent interviews was a round-
the-clock tip line that provides a
centralized mechanism to report
abuse, though they would not say
how many calls it has received.
They also cited a working group of
senior executives to review poli-
cies and procedures on harass-
ment and victim support, and fas-
ter action to investigate allega-
tions and fire or at least demote
employees found to have engaged
in misconduct to ensure they have
no path to management.
To address chronic concerns
that the FBI makes it difficult and
intimidating for victims to come
forward, the bureau is more
broadly spreading the word in on-
line and internal communications
about where victimized employ-
ees can report allegations. And the
FBI’s Victim Services Division,
which until recently had focused
on aiding victims of federal
crimes outside the bureau, has
been extending
the same level of
support to em-
ployees who are
victims of inter-
nal misconduct.
Advocates of
combating sex-
ual abuse greet-
ed the bureau’s
changes with skepticism, calling
them long overdue — coming
years after the advent of the #Me-
Too movement — and unlikely to
affect lasting change.
“Everyone has gone through
this, including the military, and
the bureau has managed to skate,”
said Jane Turner, a former long-
time FBI agent.
“Until the FBI charges these
people and throws them in jail —
or at least out of the FBI — and the
message gets out that you can’t do
this, it won’t stop,” said Turner,
who now works with the National
Whistleblower Center.
FBI Director Christopher Wray
said during a congressional hear-
ing in April that this is a subject
that “makes my blood boil.”
“There is nothing more impor-
tant than our people and how we
treat each other,” Wray said. “I
have tried to make it crystal clear
that we’re going to have zero toler-
ance for that kind of activity at any
level within the organization.”
Tip line among newFBI efforts to fightinternal misconduct
BY JIM MUSTIAN
AND ERIC TUCKER
Associated Press
Wray
The Associated Press won two
Pulitzer Prizes in photography
Friday for its coverage of the racial
injustice protests and the corona-
virus’s terrible toll on the elderly,
while The New York Times re-
ceived the public service award
for its detailed, data-filled report-
ing on the pandemic.
In a year dominated by CO-
VID-19 and furious debate over
race and policing, the Star Tribune
of Minneapolis won the breaking
news reporting prize for its cover-
age of George Floyd’s murder and
its aftermath, while Darnella Fra-
zier — the teenager who recorded
the killing on a cellphone — re-
ceived a special citation.
Frazier’s award was intended to
highlight “the crucial role of citi-
zens in journalists’ quest for truth
and justice,” the Pulitzer Board
said.
The AP and The New York
Times each won two Pulitzers, the
most prestigious prize in journal-
ism, first awarded in 1917.
The feature photography prize
went to AP’s chief photographer in
Spain, Emilio Morenatti, who cap-
tured haunting images of an older
couple embracing through a plas-
tic sheet, mortuary workers in haz-
mat gear removing bodies, and
people enduring the crisis in isola-
tion.
The breaking news photogra-
phy prize was shared by 10 AP pho-
tographers for their coverage of
the protests set off by Floyd’s kill-
ing. One widely published photo-
graph by Julio Cortez on the night
of May 28 in riot-torn Minneapolis
showed a lone, silhouetted protes-
ter running with an upside-down
American flag past a burning li-
quor store.
“Everybody, not just myself, has
given up something to go cover this
stuff,” Cortez said. “To be an ille-
gal immigrant kid who now has a
piece of the AP history is just in-
sane. I’m just super proud of ev-
eryone’s work.”
AP President and CEO Gary
Pruitt said the two prizes are a
“true testament to the talent and
dedication of AP photojournal-
ists.” He added: “These photogra-
phers told the stories of the year
through remarkable and unforget-
table images that resonated
around the world.”
The New York Times received
its public service prize for pan-
demic coverage that the judges
said was “courageous, prescient
and sweeping” and “filled a data
vacuum” that helped better pre-
pare the public. Wesley Morris of
the Times won for criticism, for his
writing on the intersection of race
and culture.
The winner of the public service
Pulitzer is honored with a gold
medal. The awards in the other
categories carry a prize of $15,000
each. The prizes are administered
by Columbia University.
JOHN MINCHILLO/AP
Protesters raise their hands on command from police as they are detained prior to arrest and processingat a gas station on South Washington Street, May 31, 2020, in Minneapolis. The image was part of aseries of Associated Press photographs that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography.
Pulitzer Prizes honor coverage ofCOVID pandemic, racial protests
Associated Press
RENO, Nev. — Nevada has be-
come the latest flashpoint in a na-
tional debate over how to teach
students about racism and its role
in U.S. history, with parents clash-
ing over curriculum proposals.
People wore MAGA hats and
waved signs outside a packed
school board meeting last week in
Reno, while trustees considered
expanding K-5 curriculum to in-
clude more teaching about equity,
diversity and racism.
Opponents say the proposal
would lead to the teaching of “crit-
ical race theory,” which seeks to
reframe the narrative of Ameri-
can history.
Critics say such lesson plans
teach students to hate the United
States.
A conservative group even sug-
gested outfitting teachers with
body cameras to ensure they
aren’t indoctrinating children
with such lessons.
“You guys have a serious prob-
lem with activist teachers pushing
politics in the classroom, and
there’s no place for it, especially
for our fifth graders,” Karen En-
gland, Nevada Family Alliance
executive director, told Washoe
County School District trustees
Tuesday.
Officials there and in Carson
City, where a similar debate is
playing out, say critical race theo-
ry is not part of their plans.
The clashes mirror fights un-
derway throughout the U.S.
In GOP-controlled statehouses,
lawmakers have passed measures
prohibiting the teaching of critical
race theory, a reaction to the na-
tion’s racial reckoning after last
year’s police killing of George
Floyd.
Nevada has bucked that trend.
Gov. Steve Sisolak signed legisla-
tion last week to add multicultural
education to social studies curri-
culum standards and teach stu-
dents about the historic contribu-
tions of members of additional ra-
cial and ethnic groups.
Dr. Jonathan Moore, deputy su-
perintendent of Nevada’s educa-
tion agency, said the laws clar-
ified social studies “content
themes,” which already included
concepts like social justice and di-
versity.
The standards do not include
critical race theory, which draws
a line from slavery and segrega-
tion to contemporary inequities
and argues racism remains em-
bedded in laws and institutions.
Elsewhere, the Black mother of
a mixed-race student is suing a
Las Vegas charter school over a
“Sociology of Change” course that
covers the concept of privilege as
it pertains to race, gender and
sexual orientation.
And Washoe County Schools
Superintendent Kristen McNeill
recommended the district form a
task force to review curriculum
instead of implementing the plan.
The board approved the task
force on Wednesday.
Nevada latest flashpoint in debate over teaching critical race theory Associated Press
Report for America
PAGE 10 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
WORLD
BEIJING — China’s famed
wandering elephants are on the
move again, heading southwest
while a male who broke from the
herd is still keeping his distance.
The group left a wildlife reserve
in the southwest of Yunnan prov-
ince more than a year ago and has
trekked 300 miles north to the out-
skirts of the provincial capital of
Kunming.
As of Saturday, they were spot-
ted in Shijie township in the city of
Yuxi, more than 5 miles southwest
of the Kunming suburb they had
arrived at last week, according to
state media reports. The lone male
was 10 miles away, still on the out-
skirts of Kunming.
The direction of their travel
could be a good sign, since author-
ities are hoping to lead them back
to their original home in the Xish-
uangbanna Dai Autonomous Pre-
fecture southwest of Kunming.
Authorities have been attempt-
ing to keep a distance between
them and local residents, while
blocking roads into villages and
seeking to lure them away with
food drops. Despite that, the herd
of 15 have raided farms, strolled
down urban streets and foraged
for snacks in villages and even a
retirement home.
All of the animals are reported
to be healthy and no person has
been injured in encounters with
them. Officials have issued strict
orders not to gawk at them or seek
to drive them off using firecrack-
ers or other means.
China’s roughly 300 wild ele-
phants enjoyed the highest level of
protected status, on a par with the
country’s unofficial mascot, the
panda bear.
However, extra precautions are
being taken amid steady rainfall
in the area and crowds of onlook-
ers expected around the Dragon
Boat festival on Monday.
Additional emergency workers,
vehicles and drones have been de-
ployed to monitor the elephants’
movements and protect local resi-
dents, the reports said. Some 2.5
tons of food were laid out for the
animals on Friday.
It remains unclear why the ele-
phants embarked on their trek, al-
though Evan Sun, wildlife cam-
paign manager with World Ani-
mal Protection, said possible rea-
sons could include lack of food
supply, a rise in the elephant pop-
ulation and, most importantly, loss
of habitat.
“The increase of human-ele-
phant conflicts reflects the urgen-
cy for a more strategic policy and
plan to protect these endangered
wild animals and their natural
habitats,” Sun wrote in an email.
YUNNAN FOREST FIRE BRIGade/AP
A migrating herd of elephants gathers Thursday in southwestern China's Yunnan Province.
China’s wandering pack ofpachyderms on move again
Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates
— The outgoing chief of Israel’s
Mossad intelligence service has
offered the closest acknowledg-
ment yet his country was behind
recent attacks targeting Iran’s nu-
clear program and a military sci-
entist.
The comments by Yossi Cohen,
speaking to Israel’s Channel 12 in-
vestigative program “Uvda” in a
segment aired Thursday night, of-
fered an extraordinary debriefing
by the head of the typically secre-
tive agency in what appears to be
the final days of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule.
It also gave a clear warning to
other scientists in Iran’s nuclear
program that they too could be-
come targets for assassination
even as diplomats in Vienna try to
negotiate terms to try to salvage its
atomic accord with world powers.
“If the scientist is willing to
change careers and will not hurt
us anymore, than yes, sometimes
we offer them” a way out, Cohen
said.
Among the major attacks to tar-
get Iran, none have struck deeper
than two explosions over the last
year at its Natanz nuclear facility.
There, centrifuges enrich urani-
um from an underground hall de-
signed to protect them from air-
strikes.
In July 2020, a mysterious ex-
plosion tore apart Natanz’s ad-
vanced centrifuge assembly,
which Iran later blamed on Israel.
Then in April of this year, another
blast tore apart one of its under-
ground enrichment halls.
Discussing Natanz, the inter-
viewer asked Cohen where he’d
take them if they could travel
there. Cohen said “to the cellar”
where “the centrifuges used to
spin.”
“It doesn’t look like it used to
look,” he added.
Cohen did not directly claim the
attacks, but his specificity offered
the closest acknowlegement yet of
an Israeli hand in the attacks. The
interviewer, journalist Ilana
Dayan, also seemingly offered a
detailed description in a voiceover
of how Israel snuck the explosives
into Natanz’s underground halls.
“The man who was responsible
for these explosions, it becomes
clear, made sure to supply to the
Iranians the marble foundation on
which the centrifuges are placed,”
Dayan said. “As they install this
foundation within the Natanz fa-
cility, they have no idea that it al-
ready includes an enormous
amount of explosives.”
They also discussed the Novem-
ber killing of Mohsen Fakhriza-
deh, an Iranian scientist who be-
gan Tehran’s military nuclear
program decades ago. U.S. intelli-
gence agencies and the Interna-
tional Atomic Energy Agency be-
lieve Iran abandoned that orga-
nized effort at seeking a nuclear
weapon in 2003. Iran long has
maintained its program is peace-
ful.
While Cohen on camera doesn’t
claim the killing, Dayan in the seg-
ment described Cohen as having
“personally signed off on the en-
tire campaign.” Dayan also de-
scribed how a remotely operated
machine gun fixed to a pickup
truck killed Fakhrizadeh and later
self-destructed.
Ex-Mossad chiefsignals Israelattacked Iran
BY JON GAMBRELL
Associated Press
four years of Donald Trump’s
presidency and his “America
first” foreign policy.
Biden also met with German
Chancellor Angela Merkel in be-
tween Saturday’s G-7 sessions, ac-
cording to photographs her spo-
kesperson tweeted. Merkel is
scheduled to meet with Biden at
the White House next month.
White House officials have said
Biden wants the leaders of the G-7
nations — the U.S., Britain, Cana-
da, France, Germany, Japan and
Italy — to speak in a single voice
against forced labor practices tar-
geting China’s Uyghur Muslims
and other ethnic minorities. Biden
hopes the denunciation will be
part of a joint statement to be re-
leased Sunday when the summit
ends, but some European allies
are reluctant to split so forcefully
with Beijing.
China had become one of the
more compelling sublots of the
wealthy nations’ summit, their
first since 2019. Last year’s gath-
ering was canceled because of
COVID-19, and recovery from the
pandemic is dominating this
year’s discussions, with leaders
expected to commit to sharing at
least 1 billion vaccine shots with
struggling countries.
The allies also took the first
steps in presenting an infrastruc-
ture proposal called “Build Back
Better for the World,” a name
echoing Biden’s campaign slogan.
The plan calls for spending hun-
dreds of billions of dollars in col-
laboration with the private sector
while adhering to climate stan-
dards and labor practices.
It’s designed to compete with
China’s trillion-dollar “Belt and
Road Initiative,” which has
launched a network of projects
and maritime lanes that snake
around large portions of the
world, primarily Asia and Africa.
Critics say China’s projects often
create massive debt and expose
nations to undue influence by
Beijing.
Britain also wants the world’s
democracies to become less re-
liant on the Asian economic giant.
The U.K. government said Satur-
day’s discussions would tackle
“how we can shape the global sys-
tem to deliver for our people in
support of our values,” including
by diversifying supply chains that
currently heavily depend on Chi-
na.
Not every European power has
viewed China in as harsh a light as
Biden, who has painted the rivalry
with China as the defining compe-
tition for the 21st century. But
there are some signs that Europe
is willing to impose greater scruti-
ny.
Before Biden took office in Ja-
nuary, the European Commission
announced it had come to terms
with Beijing on a deal meant to
provide Europe and China with
greater access to each other’s
markets.
But the deal has been put on
hold, and the European Union in
March announced sanctions tar-
geting four Chinese officials in-
volved with human rights abuses
in Xinjiang.
Compete: European leaders balk at taking adversarial stance on ChinaFROM PAGE 1
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 11
AMERICAN ROUNDUP
Dog ejected after crashfound herding sheep
WA SPOKANE — A pet
dog who vanished for
two days after being ejected from
a vehicle during a car accident
was found apparently doing the
job it was bred to do — herding
sheep.
Linda Oswald’s family and their
dog, Tilly, were driving along Ida-
ho State Highway 41 when they
crashed into another car, launch-
ing the dog through the rear win-
dow, The Spokesman-Review re-
ported.
The unharmed but stunned dog
then ran away, Oswald said.
Oswald said the family then
wrote a Facebook post that includ-
ed a picture of the 2-year-old bor-
der collie and red heeler mix.
That’s when Tyler, Travis and
Zane Potter recognized the dog in
the photo as the same dog they saw
on their family farm south of Rath-
drum.
“I think that dog was trying to
herd,” Travis Potter said.
Man stuck for days insidegiant fan at vineyard
CA SANTA ROSA — Au-
thorities rescued a man
who said he had been trapped for
two days inside a large fan at a
Northern California vineyard.
The man was discovered by a
deputy responding to a call about a
suspicious vehicle parked near
the winery in Santa Rosa, the So-
noma County Sheriff’s Office said
in a statement.
The deputy saw a hat on a piece
of farming equipment and then
found the man stuck inside the
shaft of a vineyard fan.
“The man indicated he liked to
take pictures of the engines of old
farm equipment,” the statement
said. “After a thorough investiga-
tion, which revealed the farm
equipment wasn’t antique and the
man had far more methampheta-
mine than camera equipment, the
motivation to climb into the fan
shaft remains a total mystery.”
Motorists report hackedtraffic sign; sign removed
CO DENVER — Denver
authorities said a por-
table traffic sign was hacked to
flash the phrases, “Burn It Down,”
“Abolish Cops” and “Support
Trans Kids.”
The city’s Department of Trans-
portation and Infrastructure told
KDVR-TV that the sign was re-
moved after motorists spotted the
phrases.
It wasn’t immediately known
how the sign was hacked.
Bear found stuck afterclimbing power pole
AZ WILLCOX — A bear in
Arizona emerged un-
scathed from quite the power trip
when it became stuck on a utility
pole.
Sulphur Springs Valley Electric
Cooperative, a utility company
based in the southern Arizona city
of Willcox, was notified that a bear
was tangled in power pole wires
on the outskirts of town.
Werner Neubauer, a company
lineman, said they immediately
disabled the power so the animal
would not get electrocuted.
The bear eventually climbed
down and ran off into the desert.
Firefighters battle fivedumpster fires in an hour
ND FARGO — Fargo fire-
fighters found them-
selves battling a string of dump-
ster fires on the city’s southern
edge.
The fire department said in a
news release the first call came in
at 10:50 p.m. A half-hour later fire-
fighters responded to another
dumpster fire at a different loca-
tion. Three minutes later they re-
sponded to three dumpster fires at
the same location.
The department said the fires
are considered suspicious given
the timing and proximity to one
another.
Woman accidentallyshoots sister in car
FL MIAMI BEACH — A
Georgia woman visiting
South Florida accidentally shot
her teenage sister in the face while
handing her a gun inside a car, po-
lice said.
The shooting occurred on a Mia-
mi Beach road, the Miami Herald
reported. Taniyria Holt, 24, of At-
lanta, was arrested and charged
with culpable negligence that in-
flicts personal injury and improp-
er exhibition of firearms.
The victim, identified by an ar-
rest report as Dre’Naya Ponder,
18, remained on life support.
According to the arrest report,
Holt told detectives she, her sister
and two other women were re-
cording video of themselves with
cellphones while Holt handled a
9mm handgun owned by one of
the other women. Believing the
gun was not loaded, she said she
handed it to her sister, but the gun
fired and hit Ponder.
Coach charged afterplayer took gun out of car
SC LANCASTER — A
South Carolina youth
basketball coach was arrested af-
ter a 10-year-old player took a
loaded gun from his car to his ele-
mentary school, investigators
said.
Isaac Lamon Adams, 36, was
barred from legally owning a gun
because of a previous criminal
conviction, Lancaster County
Sheriff Barry Faile said.
Adams sent the boy to his car
during basketball practice to get
something and the boy stole the
unsecured weapon, Faile said in a
statement.
Adams noticed his gun was mis-
sing the next day and called the
boy’s mother, investigators said.
She went to Erwin Elementary
School where the principal took
the boy to the office and found the
loaded Glock model 42 .380 semi-
automatic pistol in the child’s
waistband, the sheriff said.
Mom posed as student topush for better security
TX EL PASO — A Texas
mom arrested for pos-
ing as her daughter at a middle
school said she did it to push for
better security on campus.
Casey Garcia, 30, was arrested
on one count each of criminal tres-
pass and tampering with govern-
ment records, El Paso County
Sheriff’s Office officials said.
Deputies were notified by San
Elizario Independent School Dis-
trict officials of Garcia trespass-
ing on school grounds and posing
as a student, the sheriff’s depart-
ment said.
In a YouTube video titled, “Why
I posed as my 13 year old daugh-
ter. A raw but real answer,” she
said she dyed her hair and used
skin tanner. Garcia said she did it
“for a social experiment.”
Hit-and-run driver fakedcarjacking report
NJ LYNDHURST — A driv-
er who struck and seri-
ously injured a pedestrian later
reported his car had been stolen
during a carjacking in an attempt
to cover up his involvement, au-
thorities said.
Samuel Torres, 38, of Nutley,
faces several charges stemming
from the accident in Lyndhurst.
The 56-year-old woman injured
in the accident remains hospital-
ized in critical but stable condi-
tion.
Shortly after the woman was
found, Torres called police and
said he had been assaulted and
knocked unconscious during a
carjacking. He also said his car
was missing, but authorities said
Torres was driving the vehicle
when the accident occurred and
the carjacking report was fabri-
cated.
JOE BURBANK, ORLANDO SENTINEL/AP
Florida Power & Light President and CEO Eric Silagy, far right, congratulates students of The Pink Team during the ribbon cutting for the FPLDiscovery Solar Center at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The publicprivate partnership with NASA at KSC started operation with more than250,000 solar panels on nearly 500 acres, located across from the KSC Visitor Complex. The Pink Team is a high school robotics competitionteam based in Rockledge, Fla., that reengineered their 2020 robot to cut the ribbon at the ceremony, marking the official opening of themassive solar energy facility.
Think pink
THE CENSUS
15M The amount in dollars awarded to five people who lost eggsor embryos when a cryogenic storage tank failed at a San
Francisco fertility clinic. A federal jury made the award in a lawsuit filed overthe 2018 tank failure at the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco that de-stroyed about 3,500 frozen eggs and embryos. The award will go to three wom-en who lost eggs and a married couple who lost embryos.
From The Associated Press
PAGE 12 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
The master plan, as Wolfgang Van Halen told hisdad late in 2019, would please everyone.
One last Van Halen tour. Eddie, the guitar hero, and brother Alex, the
drummer, would bring back both original sing-er David Lee Roth and his replacement, Sam-my Hagar. They would also recruit MichaelAnthony, the bassist replaced by a teenageWolfgang in 2007.
To top it all off, the opening act would benone other than Wolfgang Van Halen.
Fans would go crazy, getting to relive the iconic band’s past with boththe “Unchained” and “Why Can’t This Be Love” editions sharing a sin-gle stage. Wolfgang, who had been sitting on his debut solo record, adriving hard pop album on which he played every instrument, wouldfinally get a proper career launch of his own.
Looking back, Wolfgang wonders whether it was just wishful thinking.In late 2017, doctors had diagnosed Eddie Van Halen with Stage 4
lung cancer and told him he might not make it through the year. ButEddie didn’t listen. He flew to Germany for treatments and seemed tostabilize, which allowed him to drop by the studio as his son recordedhis first album. Eventually, when the cancer spread to the guitarist’sspine and brain, the trips to St. John’s Hospital became more frequent.
Then, in spring of 2020, COVID hit, bringing what remained of nor-mal life to a halt. Touring, like everything else, shut down. It was just afew months later, on Oct. 6, that the great Eddie Van Halen died of can-cer at 65.
Now 30, Wolfgang Van Halen strug-
gles with his father’s death even as he is
about to release his debut, “Mammoth
WVH,” and spend the summer opening
stadiums for Guns N’ Roses. It’s an excit-
ing time for Wolfie, as he is known to
family and friends. But he remains sad
and more than a little angry as he consid-
ers how the pandemic altered what
should have been his dad’s final encore.
Without COVID-19, he reasons, maybe
Pop flies to Germany for more radiation.
Maybe in the summer of 2020, instead of
standing outside the window of his fa-
ther’s house to say hello, and instead of
surrounding a hospital bed as he slips
away, they are on the road together, one
last time.
“The way we figured it, if I were to
open for Van Halen, he would come out
and play a solo for a song,” Wolfgang
says. “That would have been the end-all
dream.
“I will forever loathe COVID and how
it was handled,” he adds in an unusually
sharp political rebuke, “because they
stole that moment from me.”
Son before solo artistOn a Monday night in April, Wolfgang
Van Halen is wearing his standard uni-
form, a black hoodie and matching jeans.
He sits behind a mixing board under a
wall lined with guitars. This is 5150, the
Studio City, Calif., headquarters for Van
Halen for more than three decades and
now home base for Wolfgang.
He clicks through his phone to share
demos of songs that landed on his first
record. The jangly “Resolve” emerged
during a 2015 stop in Buffalo, N.Y.; “Hor-
ribly Right” in a hotel room in New York
City during that same tour. He also plays
an early version of “Distance,” a song
released in December with a heart-
wrenching video that rose to No. 1.
Stitching together home footage, the clip
opens with Eddie, circa 1991, cradling a
swathed Wolfie and ends with him eating
an ice cream next to his grown-up only
child in a darkened cinema. That 2017
screening of “It” would be one of their
last carefree outings.
“Mammoth WVH” could have come
out three years ago. It was done. Except
that in late 2017, at that showing of “It,”
Eddie couldn’t stop coughing. He went to
the doctor soon after and received his
dire diagnosis. That’s when Wolfgang’s
career went on hold.
“Ed was encouraging him to put (the
record) out,” says Valerie Bertinelli, his
Wolfgang Van Halen plays the last guitar his father,Eddie, went out on tour with, at the recording studiohis dad built.
DAMON CASAREZ/For The Washington Post
nowWolfgang Van Halen, the son of the late, great guitar hero Eddie Van Halen, is finally releasing his debut album, ‘Mammoth WVH.’ He doesn’t care whether you like it.
Right
BY GEOFF EDGERS
The Washington Post
SEE NOW ON PAGE 13
MUSIC
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 13
MUSIC
mother and Van Halen’s wife
from 1981 until their divorce in
2007. “But he just shut down
everything when Ed got diag-
nosed. He said, ‘I am not going
anywhere. I’m going to be here
for my dad.’”
Wolfgang Van Halen was
about 8 when his father put a
stack of magazines on the kitchen
table and had him hammer out
something that would approxi-
mate snare drum hits.
“If you can do this in time,” he
told the boy, “this is what playing
drums is.”
He got a kit for his 10th birth-
day and would sit at it, playing
along to Van Halen’s 1996 compi-
lation album, “Best of: Volume
1,” and Blink 182’s “Enema of the
State.” He got a guitar some-
where around his 12th birthday.
“In the beginning, when Ed
and I were still together and
Wolfie showed an aptitude for
music, Ed would beam,” Berti-
nelli says. “That’s all he ever
wanted. He wanted somebody to
play with.”
Music was always part of the
Van Halen family. Jan, the patri-
arch, started on clarinet and
saxophone in his native Nether-
lands. Eddie played drums and
piano, winning competitions
throughout his teens. He heard
Cream and Jimmy Page and
shifted his focus to guitar. Alex,
the older brother by two years,
played drums. In the early ’70s,
they formed Mammoth, later
renamed Van Halen.
“The brothers Van Halen, how
do you compete against the
brothers Van Halen?” says Matt
Bruck, who started with Eddie in
the early 1990s as a guitar tech
before rising to help co-manage
EVH Gear, the line of guitars
designed by Van Halen. “It’s just
not a fair fight. They’re so gifted.
And Wolf is equally that gifted,
but he is his own person.”
Which seems to bother some
Van Halen fans.
“Wolf,” wrote a Twitter user
named FoodieAcademy after the
Van Halen scion played “Dis-
tance” on “Jimmy Kimmel
Live!” in February. “Don’t know
your music well. What I’ve heard
was a guitar solo that was one
note. Boring & uninspired and in
a tribute to your legendary dad. I
know he taught you better than
that.”
Wolfgang, who is not one to
ignore his trollers, fired back.
“The solo for distance is ALL
emotion,” he responded, “and at
the emotional height of the song.
It’s why Pop loved it.”
And then a follow that ends
with a red heart emoji: “(So go
f—- yourself).”
Finding his own soundOn “Mammoth WVH,” Van
Halen wasn’t looking to flaunt his
finger work. Sometimes, as on
“Distance,” that meant a solo
built off a single, furiously picked
note on the 22nd fret. On “Mam-
moth,” the title track, a melodic,
three-note solo surges against a
thick wall of sound. It feels full
and wide-open, reminiscent of
1980s U2.
There’s also the guitar work on
the album’s opener, “Mr. Ed,”
where he offers enough searing
licks and finger tapping to power
a ’79 Camaro.
But one of rock’s greatest gui-
tarists didn’t play a note on his
son’s debut. Neither did anyone
else. Wolfgang played every
instrument and sang every vocal.
He wrote all of the songs. This
was by design. After years of
working for the family business,
he wanted to establish his own
voice. And if “Mammoth WVH”
contains shades of his many
influences, from AC/DC to Foo
Fighters to Jimmy Eat World,
there is one band it doesn’t sound
much like: Van Halen.
“When I first started hearing
it, the first thing I did was send
little love notes saying, ‘Hey, I’m
so proud of you,’” says Sammy
Hagar, Van Halen’s singer from
1986’s “5150” through 1995’s
“Balance.” “Some of the fans
were giving him s— because they
wanted it to sound like Van Ha-
len. I told him, f— these people.
You have the right to be your
own man, your own musician.”
Insecurity strugglesWolfgang has never been good
about taking compliments.
“I think he’s had those (musi-
cal) skills and that talent for so
long, he doesn’t realize that,
dude, that’s not normal,” says
Andraia Allsop, his girlfriend.
“The first thing I did when I
heard the album is, I texted him
and said, ‘You have no idea how
this has moved me,’” Bertinelli
says.
How did her son respond?
“He didn’t,” she says. “He’s
just like, ‘Oh, thanks, mom.’”
“Compliments go right through
my ear,” Van Halen says.
“There’s something wrong with
me, I guess.”
Insecurity runs in the family. If
David Lee Roth was the sexy
clown in leather chaps, Eddie
was the silent, musical superhero
with a lit cigarette in his head-
stock. He revolutionized the
instrument with his creativity,
dexterity and finger-tapping
technique, posing with his duct-
taped “Frankenstein” guitar in
seemingly every issue of Circus,
Creem or Rolling Stone.
But backstage was different.
Bertinelli recalls her husband
crying, inconsolable, after receiv-
ing an award in the early 1980s
and worrying how it would affect
his relationship with Roth. She
watched as his drinking —
shrugged off in the days when a
Jack Daniels bottle next to a
Marshall stack was as standard
to the rock star costume as a
mane of feathered hair — began
to change his behavior. The shy
artist grew temperamental; the
perfectionist began to forget
solos. There are clips all over the
internet of Eddie Van Halen,
glassy eyed and rambling at
instrument conventions or back-
yard jams. The drinking eventu-
ally ruined his marriage. It is
unclear how much of his career it
cost, but his son had a front-row
seat to the worst of it.
The tipping point, for Wolf-
gang, came in Florida during the
2007 reunion tour with Roth. He
was disgusted to see his father so
out of his mind onstage and re-
fused to grab his hand for the
final bow.
“The only person who could
actually get through Ed’s head
was Wolf,” says Pat Bertinelli,
Valerie’s brother, who traveled
on that tour.
After that Florida show, weeks
of concerts were canceled so
Eddie could go to rehab.
Support systemIn person, Wolfgang Van Ha-
len speaks softly and is polite. He
does not drink or smoke and
admits that the pandemic shut-
down, in some ways, hasn’t been
as hard on him as others. He’s
always been an introvert. He
shies away from parties, prefer-
ring virtual, video game hangs
with buddies he’s had since kin-
dergarten.
Van Halen is not alone. He and
Allsop, a software engineer from
Utah, have been together for six
years. He talks to or texts his
mom and Uncle Alex virtually
every day. He knows he can
always call up former Van Halen
manager Irving Azoff for advice.
He depends on the trio he calls
“The Trusted Humans,” made up
of Bruck, Uncle Pat (Bertinelli)
and manager Tim Tournier.
That can involve deciding how
to handle a request from the
Grammys that Wolfgang perform
his father’s signature instru-
mental, “Eruption,” as a tribute.
(A terrible idea, they all agreed.)
It can be processing why a guitar
magazine promises to write a
story about him, then puts his
father’s photo on the cover. And
it can also be making the difficult
decision to put off his debut al-
bum release and tour.
And plans can shift. Even be-
fore the terrible 2020, Van Halen
struggled with anxiety and de-
pression. Since his father’s death,
there are still days when he
struggles to get out of bed.
During this stretch, some of
the least supportive people have
been Van Halen fans. Toughen
up, they write. You wouldn’t be
anything without your dad.
They continue to blame him
for replacing Anthony, which
prevented a full reunion of the
glorious “Jump”-era Van Halen.
Those who insist that the band’s
original bassist should have been
in the room in 2012 working on
their final studio album don’t
realize what might have hap-
pened had Wolfgang Van Halen
not been there, Bertinelli says.
“Van Halen does not make a
final record without Wolfie,” she
says. “(Fans) got three extra
tours out of Van Halen because
of Wolf.”
Forging aheadThis should be a triumphant
time. There are already signs
that “Mammoth WVH” is des-
tined to be a hit. “Distance”
topped the Billboard charts in
December, and nearly 5 million
people clicked on the video on
YouTube. Terrie Carr, the pro-
gram director at the influential
WDHA-FM in New Jersey, said
that as a potential radio artist,
“Wolfgang checks all the boxes.”
“When you see a musician that
is able to do the things he does,
playing all the instruments but
playing them so professionally,
that’s sort of a rock ’n’ roll
Prince,” says Carr. “He can ap-
peal to a younger audience. Ev-
eryone knows Eddie, and now
you’ve got this next generation of
this wunderkind making music
and people saying, ‘Wow, that
apple doesn’t fall far from the
tree.’”
For Van Halen, the battle re-
mains how to move forward in
his own career while protecting
and promoting his father’s. Mon-
ey won’t be an issue. Eddie Van
Halen left a quarter of his estate
to the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foun-
dation, which donates instru-
ments to students who need
them. Most of the rest went to his
son. Van Halen also owns his
father’s likeness and decision-
making rights. Alex controls the
Van Halen recordings, but Wolf-
gang says the two will work to-
gether to preserve the band’s
legacy.
That won’t be easy. Wolfgang
doesn’t feel emotionally ready to
start going through the walls of
tapes Eddie left behind at 5150.
There may be tributes to Eddie
Van Halen down the road, but
don’t expect Wolfgang and the
other band members to tour
together. He and Uncle Alex are
close, but his relationship with
the others, he says, is little more
than cordial. And this summer,
you won’t hear Wolfgang Van
Halen in an arena throwing
“Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” or
“Poundcake” into the set list.
It is the same reason he turned
down the Grammy request for
“Eruption” in March.
“My whole life, I’ve worked so
hard to be my own musician, and
even my dad would be like,
‘What are you doing?’” says Van
Halen. “‘Do your own s—. Stop
pretending to be me.’ That’s why
I said no. Because I’m not my
dad.”
Now: Wolfgang’s independence bothers some Van Halen fansFROM PAGE 12
CHRIS PIZZELLO, INVISION/AP
Wolfgang and Eddie Van Halen perform during a 2012 concert in Los Angeles. “That’s all (Eddie) everwanted. He wanted somebody to play with,” said his exwife and Wolfgang’s mother, Valerie Bertinelli.
PAGE 14 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
BOOKS
Norman Maclean’s book novella
“A River Runs Through It,”
about fly-fishing and Montana,
is more poetry than narrative.
It’s also a triumph of American literature.
His son, John N. Maclean, is also an
author, and his latest book, “Home Wa-
ters,” is a lyrical companion to his father’s
classic, chronicling their family’s history
and bond with Montana’s Blackfoot River.
His storytelling — from the fishing with
his dad to the life and death of his uncle
Paul — is reliable, elegant and charming.
After a 30-year career as a journalist,
mostly as a correspondent for the Chicago
Tribune in Washington, D.C., the younger
Maclean took to writing well-received
nonfiction about wildfires in the American
West. He hadn’t
considered a family
memoir.
Then, he caught a
big trout — a really
big trout — while
fishing a stretch of
the Blackfoot that
his father memorial-
ized in “A River
Runs Through It,”
published in 1976.
He wrote about that
fish, “the fish of a
lifetime,” he called it, for a local club of
anglers, and then, with some prodding,
expanded the tale for a regional magazine.
That was the end of it, he thought, until a
couple years later when an editor un-
earthed the magazine article while on
vacation in Montana.
Did Maclean want to write a book?
“I thought this was going to be a big fish
story, but then it turned into something
very different,” says Maclean, now 78. “I
don’t call it a memoir. I call it a chronicle.
A memoir is about you, and this isn’t all
about me.”
Indeed, “Home Waters” is about geol-
ogy and glaciers and the forming of a
river. It’s about history and Meriwether
Lewis and how larch trees grew to be
giants. It’s about nostalgia and cross-coun-
try car rides to a family cabin by Seeley
Lake in Montana and how generations of
Macleans became tied to a place. There’s
also a fair bit about trout and his famous
father’s book.
“I do not fish alone on the Blackfoot
River, ever,” Maclean writes, “even
though now I mostly fish by myself. When
I’m on the water, and especially when no
one else is around, I feel the presence of
generations of my family whose stories
run through it.”
Maclean’s writing is often intimate.
Family lore, told and retold, can be a fuzzy
thing, but some memories about his fa-
ther, like their first time fishing together,
remained spectacularly vivid and person-
al.
“I could not write it,” Maclean says of
that childhood outing. “It was just too
much. Too overpowering. But when I got
to a place in ‘Home Waters’ where it was
appropriate, I knew I had to do it.”
“Home Waters” was not meant as a
“conscious parallel” to his father’s literary
achievement, Maclean says, but we do
learn more about the characters and sto-
ries that made “A River Runs Through It”
so splendid. After reading an early version
of “Home Waters,” a friend told Maclean,
“You’ve written the backstory to ‘A River
Runs Through It.’”
“I said, ‘I’ve done what?’ I almost fell off
my chair.”
“Home Waters,” though, stands nicely
on its own.
Fans of “A River Runs Through It,” and
particularly those of the movie adaptation,
will find intrigue in Maclean’s investiga-
tion into the death of his uncle. In the film,
Paul — played by a young Brad Pitt — is
beaten to death in Montana. In reality, he
was murdered in a Chicago alley, and,
although conspiracy theories abound, the
circumstances remain a mystery.
“I wanted to straighten people out,”
Maclean says.
Maclean concedes that his father’s book
is “more consistently poetic” than his own,
but he makes no apologies, noting that the
older Maclean was a renowned English
professor at the University of Chicago.
“I didn’t spend my career teaching
Shakespeare and Wordsworth,” he says. “I
spent my career writing hard news. That’s
me.”
While Maclean’s journalistic prose is
sharp and concise, it can also be beautiful.
In one instance, he describes coming upon
his father as daylight faded on the Black-
foot.
“He stood there next to the river,
framed by bluffs and mountains to either
side and the river running through them,”
he writes, “and with his arms outstretched
he gazed upward at the sunset with that
open, ecstatic expression on his face that
arose only in moments of greatest joy. He
stood like that for minutes.”
When “A River Runs Through It” was
published 45 years ago, the Blackfoot
River was a polluted mess and a lousy spot
to fish. The book — and certainly the film
in 1992 — brought celebrity status to the
river, and conservation efforts brought its
restoration.
“It’s better now than anything I remem-
ber from when I was a kid,” Maclean says.
The river’s prominence and renewal,
though, have created contemporary chal-
lenges. “Fisherfolk,” Maclean writes,
“dressed in fresh-from-the-box Stetson
hats and vests” crowded onto Montana
rivers, and “the Blackfoot River became a
heavily trafficked ‘must’ stop.”
The pandemic has hastened that specta-
cle. Celebrity, even for a river, has its
price.
“There is trouble on the river now be-
cause it is overused and nothing is being
done to sensibly restrict its use,” Maclean
says. “But I’m hoping that ‘Home Waters’
contributes toward the general movement
to try to do something. Otherwise, we will
love it to death.”
Peter Hubbard
Author John N. Maclean fishes in Montana. Maclean wrote “Home Waters,” which became a sort of backstory to “A River RunsThrough It,” the book novella written by his father, Norman. He says it was not meant as a “conscious parallel” to his father’s work.
‘I do not fish alone’‘Home Waters,’ John N. Maclean’s new book, chronicles how
his family is connected to the Blackfoot River in Montana
BY NICK EHLI
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 15
CROSSWORD AND COMICSNEW YORK TIMES CROSSWORD
GAME OVERBY ADAM WAGNER / EDITED BY WILL SHORTZ
46 Smaller alternative to a Quarter Pounder
48 Chicago team, in old ‘‘S.N.L.’’ sketches
50 Ski-lodge mugful
54 Fraternity letter
55 King of ancient Israel
56 Comic actress Gasteyer
57 Left, cutely
60 Great Lakes nation
64 Pickup line?
65 Like the columns of the Lincoln Memorial
66 Cures
68 ‘‘____ we good?’’
69 King of ancient Egypt
71 Tattoo artist, so to speak
73 Org. with a complex code
74 ‘‘Happy Days’’ network
75 Beach Boys song set to the tune of Chuck Berry’s ‘‘Sweet Little Sixteen’’
78 King of myth
80 4G letters
81 ____ pace
82 Not doing so hot
86 F-, e.g.
87 Discourage
89 Waze way: Abbr.
90 Piece of plastic with a gladiator pictured on it
92 Physics demonstration often done from the roof of a school
95 ____-Briggs Type Indicator (popular personality test)
97 ‘‘I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure,’’ e.g.
98 King of Shakespeare
99 ‘‘Keep Austin ____’’ (city slogan)
101 Annual presidential address, for short
103 Partner
107 ‘‘No worries’’
109 ‘‘Bon appétit!’’
111 Christ, to Bach
113 Place
114 Chimney channels
116 Warning on presents stashed in the closet
118 King of Skull Island
119 ‘‘Huddle up!’’
121 Actress Elisabeth
122 When: Sp.
124 Early adolescent years, so to speak
125 Engage
126 Opposite of wind up
127 Infinitesimal
128 Toys with much assembly required
129 Travel-brochure listings
130 Named
DOWN
1 Some hip-hop collectibles
2 On dry land
3 Join a conference call, say
4 Quick to fall asleep, in a way
5 Sense of self
6 Día de San Valentín gifts
7 Tearfully complain
8 Tabloid nickname for mother Nadya Suleman
9 Powder in the powder room
10 Course with greens
11 Machiavellian sort
12 Omits
13 Objective
14 Gateway city to Utah’s Arches National Park
15 Some after-Christmas announcements
16 Home to about one in five Californians
17 Long-running sitcom set in Seattle
18 Them’s the breaks!
22 Spent some time on YouTube, say
28 Nobel Peace Prize recipient who wrote ‘‘No Future Without Forgiveness’’
29 Sought-after position
34 Pop
36 G.P.s, e.g.
39 City about 25 miles S.E. of Chicago, IL.
41 ____-faire (social adeptness)
44 Level the playing field?
45 Put one past
47 One ending for a classic board game — another of which (when a player resigns) is represented visually six times in this puzzle
49 Tough spots
50 Bother incessantly
51 Scoring win after win
52 Mowry who starred alongside her twin Tia in the ’90s sitcom ‘‘Sister, Sister’’
53 ____ Z
55 Cubs’ place to play home games
58 Wilson who wrote the lyrics to 75-Across
59 Play areas
61 The ‘‘Bel Paese,’’ to locals
62 Borrower
63 Scale
67 Quintessentially cowardly
69 Mosaic maker
70 Remove from under the seat in front of you, say
72 Ducks known for their soft down feathers
76 Tinker (with)
77 Yes or no follower
79 ‘‘I’ve got it!’’
83 Rob ____, British comedian and TV personality
84 Samosa tidbit
85 Part of an office phone no.
88 Tool for a duel
91 Sidewalk drawings
92 One of the Manning brothers
93 Disentangle oneself
94 Main source of energy?
95 Breakout 1993 single for Counting Crows
96 Stay awhile
100 Only color of the rainbow not seen on the L.G.B.T. pride flag
102 Portable dwellings
104 Richie with the No. 1 hit ‘‘All Night Long’’
105 Borrower
106 Potato cultivar that was developed in Ontario, despite its name
108 Pelvic exercise
110 Nintendo dino
112 Like diamonds from a mine
115 Father
117 Weak, as a case
119 ‘‘Oh, and another thing . . . ,’’ for short
120 Graffiti signature
123 College, to a Brit
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
22120291
524232
0392827262
635343332313
241404938373
94847464544434
554535251505
3626160695857565
76665646
47372717079686
089787776757
685848382818
1909988878
796959493929
6015014013012011010019989
311211111011901801701
811711611511411
321221121021911
621521421
031921821721
Adam Wagner, of Oakland, Calif., is a senior copywriter for an ad agency in San Francisco. He says his real No. 1 job, though, as of about two months ago, is being a first-time dad. Adam solves the Times crossword aloud every night with his son cuddled next to him — “so I imagine he’s one of the few people alive who can claim that he literally has a lifelong New York Times crossword solving streak.” — W.S.
ACROSS
1 Gilda of the original ‘‘S.N.L.’’ cast
7 They may need to be cut off
11 Ways of making ends meet?
16 Degree in design, for short
19 Cow’s-milk cheese that’s often grated
20 Sweet-16 org.
21 Honor named for a Greek goddess
23 Site of a lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
24 ‘‘____ pass’’
25 Where snow leopards and blue sheep roam
26 King of a nursery rhyme
27 Went to bat (for)
30 Test versions
31 Good fashion sense, in modern slang
32 Appear
33 Features of some indoor arenas
35 Theater-curtain material
37 Fired off, say
38 Grind
40 Money of the Philippines
42 Follow
43 One giving a khutbah sermon
GUNSTON STREET
“Gunston Street” is drawn by Basil Zaviski. Email him at [email protected], and online at gunstonstreet.com.
RESULTS FOR ABOVE PUZZLE
RADNERSOTSSEAMSBFA
ASIAGONCAACLIOAWARD
PHAROSITLLHIMALAYAS
COLEADVOCATEDBETAS
DRIPSEEMDOMESSCRIM
SENTSLOGPESOSHEED
IMAMMACJRDABEARS
HOTCOCOARHODAVID
ANAWENTBYEBYEONEIDA
RAMDORICANTIDOTES
ARETUTINKERIRSABC
SURFINUSAMIDASLTE
SNAILSINBADSHAPEION
DETERRTEAMEXCARD
EGGDROPMYERSOATH
LEARWEIRDSOTUALLY
ITSOKENJOYJESULIEU
FLUESDONOTOPENKONG
BRINGITINSHUECUANDO
TENDERAGEHIREUNREEL
WEELEGOSINNSTITLED
PAGE 16 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
GADGETS & TECHNOLOGY
“Joerns Motor Mfg. Co. St. Paul,
Minn.” on its gas tank.
It’s a tribute to a famous board
track racing motorcycle made by a
short-lived St. Paul company in the
early part of the 20th century. One of
Joerns’ 1915 Cyclone motorcycles
that had been part of actor Steve
McQueen’s collection was sold at
auction in 2015 for a record $775,000.
Clark said he actually got a taste of
the board track experience of a cen-
tury ago by riding one of his motori-
zed bicycles on the wooden National
Sports Center velodrome in Blaine
before it was torn down last year.
Clark has an art school back-
ground, experience as a furniture
designer and a day job as a senior
designer at Target Corp. But he’s also
been a longtime bike, motorcycle,
moped and scooter enthusiast.
Some of his other motorized bicy-
cles include ones modeled after vin-
tage Harley-Davidson and Indian
motorcycles. He made a yellow and
green John Deere-themed motorized
bicycle as a 70th birthday gift for his
father, a former farmer and a fan of
John Deere lawn mowers.
Clark and Murphy also worked on
a 1970s-influenced lowrider bike with
an electric engine, a leather battery
case and a fake raccoon tail dangling
from the handlebars. And they mod-
ified an old pedal-powered Schwinn
with a rack to carry an electric-pow-
ered longboard skateboard.
Functional, environmental Some of their bikes have been
purchased by businesses that use
them as cool display objects. But
they’re all ridable.
“We want to make sure they’re
functional,” Clark said. “It is an expe-
rience you can have with the art.”
Their piston-engine models will
feel familiar to anyone who rode a
moped from the 1970s, with response,
vibration and buzz of a little gas two-
stroke engine that’s peppy for its size
but maxes out at about 25 mph. Their
electric-drive models have the sur-
prising, “Oh-it’s-on!” silent acceler-
ation similar to that of an electric
scooter.
Clark wants to make his models
with piston engines more environ-
mentally friendly by running them on
biofuels. He’s growing algae in his
basement with the hopes of creating
a fuel that will burn cleaner than
fossil fuels in his two-stroke engines
and can be produced in enough vol-
ume to support microcommuting.
“An algae turbine bike is our next
build,” he said.
That’s an admittedly “crazy” idea
that Clark and Murphy have to re-
purpose an automobile turbocharger
unit and turn it into a bicycle turbine
engine powered by biofuel.
Clark said their motorized bicycles
are an answer to what he sees as a
“toxic masculinity” that is sometimes
seen in mainstream motorcycle cul-
ture. In other words, less speed, less
noise, more environmentally friend-
ly, more accessible. But still cool.
He compares what he and Murphy
are doing to a California company
called Super73 that makes pedal-
equipped two wheelers that resemble
1970s era mopeds, except they have
electric engines.
Clark and Murphy recently
showed off a batch of their bikes at a
pop-up exhibit in Murphy’s shop in
the Midway area of St. Paul. Their
hand-built machines range in price
from $2,500 to $5,500.
It’s not surprising that sales of
e-bikes are taking off.
The bikes, which are
equipped with electric motors
that make pedaling easier or even
unnecessary, have become a conve-
nient, easy-to-use, environmentally
friendly transportation alternative to
cars or even conventional bikes.
But are they cool? Would you ever
think of an e-bike as a ridable work of
art? Would Steve McQueen have ever
been seen pedaling one?
He might have if it had been cre-
ated by a couple of Twin Cities mak-
er types who are building what they
call “bespoke motovelos.” They’re
mounting electric or piston engines
on bicycle frames and adding vintage
parts and design elements to produce
pedalable homages to famous motor-
bikes of the past.
The bikes are designed by Minnea-
polis resident Jeremy Clark, in col-
laboration with his friend, Johnny
Murphy, a Roseville, Minn., inventor
and entrepreneur.
The two are serial tinkerer artists
who have exhibited offbeat projects
at places like Northern Spark, Art-A-
Whirl and the Mini Maker Faire.
Their MotoVolta line of bicycles is
a way for them to celebrate their love
of historical motorcycles as mechani-
cal works of art while using the bicy-
cle as a platform that’s more envi-
ronmentally friendly and more ac-
cessible.
Designed as tributes A bright yellow bike designed by
Clark with a one-cylinder engine has
a red logo labeled “Cyclone” and
ANTHONY SOUFFLE/TNS
Detail of the Cyclone tribute bike designed by Minneapolis designers Jeremy Clark and Johnny Murphy. Riders canpedal the bike or engage the small gaspowered engine to reach speeds up to 25 mph.
Not your average bikeTwo Minneapolis makers create cool engine-, pedal-powered two-wheelers
BY RICHARD CHIN
Star Tribune
The first thing you’ll notice about the Tula Mic is it’s a
cool-looking device, a look that can be considered retro.
But once you use it, there’s nothing retro about it.
The pocket-sized microphone is packed with features
beyond just being a recording device. It connects to a
computer with a USB-C connection but also works as a
stand-alone portable audio recorder with 8GB of internal
memory. An internal 700 mAh lithium ion battery will
last for up to 14 hours of portable recording with the noise
reduction off and 10 to 12 hours with it on.
The Tula works great. Audio is recorded with superb
clarity and removes unwanted background sound with
built-in noise reduction. The specifications list the fre-
quency range as 50-20k, with a bit depth/sample rate of
24-bit 48kHz.
Recording is done in two manners. The cardioid uni-
directional polar pattern is highly sensitive to sound di-
rectly in front of the microphone. With the omnidirection-
al recording, audio is gathered equally from all direc-
tions. Changing between recording choices is done with a
mic select button on the side.
The Tula is about the size of a deck of playing cards and
on the side is a 3.5mm input for your headphones or a
lavalier clip-on microphone. A flip stand is great for rotat-
ing it to the angle needed.
A pair of LED lights on the front indicate when record-
ing is taking place, the memory is full, battery level, and
act as a gain meter. Controls are on the side for gain up
and down, forward, back, mute, volume, recording on and
off, play, power and noise reduction.
Getting recorded files off the Tula is simple. Just con-
nect it to a PC as a drive, which allows the recorded .wav
files to be copied in the same way files would be copied
from an external drive.
Online: tulamics.com; $229, in cream, black and red
The Monos Kiyo purifying water bottle is a simple way
to ensure you have clean drinking water at home, work or
travel. It’s also a good way to eliminate many plastic wa-
ter bottles from your life.
It’s built and looks like many of today’s portable water
bottles, holding 500 mL and measuring 2.8-by-3.6-by-9.1
inches with an 11-ounce weight. A screw-on top and a
carrying handle make it look just like a water bottle.
But what makes the Kiyo different is that it’s built with
400 mAh of internal power and UVC technology to purify
the water content. Monos states it purifies water in as
little as 60 seconds, and neutralizes up to 99.99% of bacte-
ria in deep clean mode.
A USB-C charging port is built into the top cap and is
covered by a water-resistant tab. Assuming it’s charged,
to get the water clean just swipe across the cap, which
activates the Kiyo’s UVC purification system.
To get pure drinking water, there are two cleaning
modes, both activated from a sensor in the top of the cap
and show progress with a glowing light. The first is with
one swipe for a quick clean (blue
light), which takes 60 seconds,
the second is two swipes for
a three-minute deep clean
(green light).
A USB-C charging
cable is included. A full
charge of the battery
takes three hours,
which should last for a
month. With its dou-
ble-wall vacuum
insulation, beverag-
es will stay hot for
12 hours or cold
for 24 hours.
Online: mono-
s.com; $70, available in
six colors
GADGETS
Pocket-sized Tula Micpacked with features
BY GREGG ELLMAN
Tribune News Service
TULA/TNS
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 17
Max D. Lederer Jr., Publisher
Lt. Col. Marci Hoffman, Europe commander
Lt. Col. Michael Kerschbaum, Pacific commander
Michael Ryan, Pacific chief of staff
EDITORIAL
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Robert H. Reid, Senior Managing [email protected]
Tina Croley, Managing Editor for [email protected]
Sean Moores, Managing Editor for [email protected]
Joe Gromelski, Managing Editor for [email protected]
BUREAU STAFF
Europe/MideastErik Slavin, Europe & Mideast Bureau [email protected] +49(0)631.3615.9350; DSN (314)583.9350
PacificAaron Kidd, Pacific Bureau [email protected]+81.42.552.2511 ext. 88380; DSN (315)227.7380
WashingtonJoseph Cacchioli, Washington Bureau [email protected] (+1)(202)886-0033Brian Bowers, Assistant Managing Editor, [email protected]
CIRCULATION
MideastRobert Reismann, Mideast Circulation [email protected]@stripes.comDSN (314)583-9111
EuropeKaren Lewis, Community Engagement [email protected]@stripes.com+49(0)631.3615.9090; DSN (314)583.9090
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CONTACT US
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Reader [email protected]
Additional contactsstripes.com/contactus
OMBUDSMAN
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© Stars and Stripes 2021
stripes.com
OPINION
WASHINGTON
Construction of the San Francisco-
Oakland Bay Bridge took four
years in the 1930s, but after a
1989 earthquake, when one-third
of the Bay Bridge had to be replaced, this
took two decades. A nation planning to
quickly spend hundreds of billions on in-
frastructure should wonder why the repair
proceeded so sluggishly — and why the in-
flation-adjusted cost of building a mile of
the interstate highway system tripled be-
tween the 1960s and 1980s.
The Claremont Institute’s William Voe-
geli considers this evidence of “activist
government’s dysfunction” — govern-
ment’s inability, or unwillingness, to do one
thing at a time. Government cannot simply
repair a bridge; it must do so while com-
plying with an ever-thickening, sometimes
immobilizing web of ever-multiplying envi-
ronmental, labor, safety and other man-
dates. They also now include, as part of
what Voegeli calls the Biden administra-
tion’s “shock-and-awe statism,” Washing-
ton’s obsession with “equity” — racial dis-
tributions of government goods and servic-
es.
Remember Barack Obama’s 2010 epi-
phany about the nonexistence of his prom-
ised “shovel-ready” projects? According to
Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge in
“Capitalism in America: A History” (2018),
“Today bigger highway projects take a dec-
ade just to clear the various bureaucratic
hurdles before workers can actually get to
work.”
They note that nature, heedless of gov-
ernment, provided the nation’s first and
most consequential infrastructure: The
United States has more miles of navigable
rivers than the rest of the world combined.
Five rivers — the Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas,
Tennessee, Colorado — “flow diagonally
rather than perpendicularly, drawing the
country together into a natural geograph-
ical unit.”
In the 1820s, the nation’s first ambitious
human-made infrastructure project, the
363-mile Erie Canal, established that New
York, not New Orleans or Boston, would be
the premier U.S. port, with enormous polit-
ical and cultural consequences. Govern-
ment disbursement of land powered the de-
velopment of the 19th century’s greatest
non-natural infrastructure, railroads,
which knitted the nation’s regions into the
world’s largest single market. By 1905,
write Greenspan and Wooldridge, 14% of
the world’s railway mileage was connected
to Chicago. “By river,” write Greenspan
and Wooldridge, “the distance from Pitts-
burgh to St. Louis was 1,164 miles. By rail it
was 612 miles.”
“The railroads,” they write, “were the
first great crony capitalists. They bought
politicians, bribed judges, and, in Henry
Adams’s phrase, turned themselves into
‘local despotisms’ in one state after anoth-
er.” In the 1860s, when railroads helped the
North subdue the South, “Congress repeat-
edly gave away parcels of land the size of
northeastern states.” Gifts to the Union Pa-
cific were, cumulatively, equivalent to New
Hampshire and New Jersey combined. By
one scholar’s estimate, if all the land given
to railroads in that decade were cobbled in-
to one state, it would be the third largest,
smaller than Alaska and Texas but larger
than California.
In 1861, when Western Union connected
the coasts at Fort Laramie, Wyo., the tele-
graph quickly became a communications
infrastructure as important as broadband
is today. It instantly distributed financial
information, enabling Chicago to open its
commodities exchange in 1848.
The 20th century’s principal infrastruc-
ture involved pouring an ocean of concrete.
Greenspan and Wooldridge: “All America’s
hard-surfaced roads in 1900, laid end to
end, would not have stretched from New
York to Boston, or 215 miles.” In 1986,
workers completed I-80, the first transcon-
tinental interstate, from New York’s Ge-
orge Washington Bridge to the Bay Bridge.
Can today’s nation — divided by the politics
of envy and race-mongering; with “lead-
ers” too timid to ask 98.2% of Americans
(those earning less than $400,000) to pay
for the gusher of new government benefac-
tions — perform great feats?
Last month was the 60th anniversary of
President John F. Kennedy’s speech sum-
moning the nation to send astronauts to the
moon in the 1960s. Ben Domenech, publish-
er of The Federalist, says of the speech: “It
seems like it comes not just from a different
time but from a different country.” Kenne-
dy’s challenge required accomplishing 2
million tasks, a million of which involved
then-uninvented technologies. He did not
stoke racial or class divisions; he spoke of a
national identity receptive to great and un-
certain exertions. He did not pander to par-
ticular constituencies, promising union
jobs and racial “equity” throughout the
space program. Instead, he asked the na-
tion to take gigantic risks for the nation’s,
and humanity’s, benefit.
Whereas “Kennedy called the nation to
dare,” today, Domenech writes, America is
where “schools can’t fail kids for giving the
wrong answers, where teachers refuse to
teach even with precautions and vaccina-
tions, and where local authorities won’t put
down riots.” A different country.
What is the America of today capable of building?BY GEORGE F. WILL
Washington Post Writers Group
Ever since President Joe Biden an-
nounced that U.S. troops would be
leaving Afghanistan by Sept. 11,
there has been a troubling trend on
my social media platforms. Afghans with
whom I served during my deployment have
been reaching out more frequently. At first, it
is the familiar conversations that we have
shared in the three years since I left: how our
families are, current events, who has been
killed in action. Lately, the messages have
been direct and urgent. They are calls for help.
As U.S. and coalition troops leave Afghanis-
tan, thousands of translators will be without
not only their source of livelihood, but their
protectors. They are marked men, as the Tali-
ban retake sections of the country and have be-
gun assassinating them.
In 2009, Congress passed the Afghan Allies
Protection Act making Afghan translators eli-
gible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV).
There are currently some 18,000 deserving
Afghans who have applied under the SIV pro-
gram and are awaiting a decision. But the pro-
gram needs to be reformed, and time is run-
ning out.
I have participated in the SIV process. As I
was leaving Afghanistan in 2018, I wrote a let-
ter of recommendation for one of my inter-
preters, Hazrat, to the chief of mission at the
U.S. Embassy in Kabul. In addition to my let-
ter, he had to provide a human resources letter
from his company that stated that he had
worked there for at least two years, and that he
was under my charge during employment.
There are many problems with the current
process.
Ihad two interpreters but could only recom-
mend Hazrat because the other switched em-
ployers during my tour, resetting his two-year
employment clock. My other translator, Noo-
rullah, had to apply under a letter of recom-
mendation from another U.S. Army officer.
As for the human resources letter, it can be a
year or more until the company that employs
an interpreter is contacted by someone from
the embassy. As is the case with many contrac-
tors, the company could be closed or reorga-
nized, which leads to a denial.
The two-year requirement needs to be elim-
inated. Due to the current and previous coali-
tion withdrawals, many interpreters were re-
leased of their employment before they could
complete 24 months of service. Regardless,
how long you served coalition troops does not
make you any less of a target.
Finally, the process takes too long. Under
the Afghan Allies Protection Act the U.S. gov-
ernment has nine months to process a SIV ap-
plication. It took 36 in the case of Hazrat, and
that was just for his approval. He still is not in
the U.S., and it is unlikely that he will be before
the September withdrawal date. After which,
he and his family could be killed.
What is needed is an immediate evacuation
of Afghan interpreters to a third country.
There, they can safely conduct the SIV appli-
cation process. In 1996 the U.S. did just that for
Iraqi Kurds in what was known as Operation
Pacific Haven. In danger of reprisal from Sad-
dam Hussein due to their work with U.S. aid
groups, Kurds were airlifted to Guam. There
they were housed and processed through im-
migration before eventually settling in the
United States and other countries.
Verifying those who served as interpreters
for U.S. troops is a relatively straightforward
process. They have already gone through ex-
tensive background checks and undergo
counterintelligence screening every six
months. Unlike the thousands of refugees who
seek to enter our country each year, we have
records for those who have supported our
forces in Afghanistan.
It should be noted that the United States
does not and should not have to undertake this
evacuation alone. The NATO-led Resolute
Support mission in Afghanistan is a coalition
of 29 countries, all of which have had local na-
tional interpreter support.
We have a moral obligation to protect those
who put their lives on the line to support our
troops in America’s longest war. If we do not,
who would ever help our forces in a future con-
flict? We must not allow the date of Sept. 11 to
have yet another tragic meaning.
US can’t reciprocate translators’ help with just wordsBY WESLEY SATTERWHITE
Special to Stars and Stripes
Wesley Satterwhite is a master’s student at GeorgetownUniversity’s School of Foreign Service. A captain in the U.S.Army Reserve, he served as a mentor to Afghan National Armycommandos from 2017-2018.
PAGE 18 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 19
SCOREBOARD/SPORTS BRIEFS
PRO SOCCER
MLS
EASTERN CONFERENCE
W L T Pts GF GA
New England 5 1 2 17 11 7
Philadelphia 4 2 2 14 9 5
Orlando City 3 1 3 12 8 4
NYCFC 3 2 2 11 13 7
CF Montréal 3 3 2 11 10 9
Columbus 3 2 2 11 7 6
Nashville 2 0 5 11 9 6
Atlanta 2 1 4 10 9 7
New York 3 4 0 9 10 10
D.C. United 3 5 0 9 8 11
Inter Miami CF 2 4 2 8 8 13
Toronto FC 1 4 2 5 8 12
Chicago 1 5 1 4 4 11
Cincinnati 1 4 1 4 6 15
Western Conference
W L T Pts GF GA
Seattle 5 0 3 18 14 3
Sporting KC 5 2 1 16 15 10
LA Galaxy 5 2 0 15 11 11
Colorado 4 2 1 13 12 8
Houston 3 3 2 11 11 12
San Jose 3 5 0 9 11 12
Portland 3 4 0 9 9 11
Real Salt Lake 2 1 3 9 9 7
LAFC 2 3 2 8 8 9
Vancouver 2 4 1 7 6 9
Austin FC 2 4 1 7 5 8
Minnesota 2 4 1 7 6 11
FC Dallas 1 3 3 6 8 11
Note: Three points for victory, one pointfor tie.
Saturday’s game
Austin FC at Sporting Kansas City
Friday, June 18
Nashville at New York Vancouver at Real Salt Lake
Saturday, June 19
Chicago at Columbus Colorado at Cincinnati Orlando City at Toronto FC New England at New York City FC Miami at D.C. United Minnesota at FC Dallas San Jose at Austin FC Seattle at LA Galaxy Sporting Kansas City at Portland Houston at Los Angeles FC
Sunday, June 20
Philadelphia at Atlanta
NWSL
W L T Pts GF GA
Orlando 3 0 2 11 7 4
Portland 3 2 0 9 11 4
Washington 2 1 2 8 5 5
Gotham FC 2 1 1 7 2 1
Houston 2 2 1 7 6 6
Chicago 2 2 1 7 4 7
North Carolina 1 2 1 4 6 3
Reign FC 1 2 1 4 2 3
Louisville 1 2 1 4 2 8
Kansas City 0 3 2 2 2 6
Note: Three points for victory, one pointfor tie.
Saturday, June 19
Reign FC at North Carolina Washington at Chicago
Sunday, June 20
Houston at Louisville Kansas City at Portland Gotham FC at Orlando
Tuesday, June 22
Chicago at Reign FC
Wednesday, June 23
Orlando at Kansas CityNorth Carolina at Louisville
PRO BASKETBALL
WNBA
EASTERN CONFERENCE
W L Pct GB
Connecticut 8 2 .800 —
New York 5 4 .556 2½
Washington 4 5 .444 3½
Atlanta 4 6 .400 4
Chicago 3 7 .300 5
Indiana 1 10 .091 7½
WESTERN CONFERENCE
W L Pct GB
Seattle 9 2 .818 —
Las Vegas 7 3 .700 1½
Phoenix 5 5 .500 3½
Dallas 5 5 .500 3½
Los Angeles 4 4 .500 3½
Minnesota 3 5 .375 4½
Thursday’s games
Washington 89, Los Angeles 71
Friday’s games
Seattle 86, Atlanta 75Dallas 77, Phoenix 59
Saturday’s games
Chicago at IndianaLos Angeles at Minnesota
Sunday’s games
Seattle at ConnecticutWashington at AtlantaDallas at Las VegasNew York at Phoenix
Monday’s games
No games scheduled
COLLEGE BASEBALL
NCAA Division I Super RegionalsBest-of-three; x-if necessary
At Fayetteville, Ark.Friday: No. 1 Arkansas 21, N.C. State 2Saturday: N.C. State vs. No. 1 Arkansasx-Sunday: N.C. State vs. No. 1 Arkansas
At Austin, TexasSaturday: South Florida at No. 2 TexasSunday: South Florida vs. No. 2 Texasx-Sunday: South Florida vs. No. 2 Texas
At Knoxville, Tenn.Saturday: LSU at No. 3 TennesseeSunday: LSU vs. No. 3 Tennesseex-Monday: LSU vs. No. 3 Tennessee
At Nashville, Tenn.Friday: No. 4 Vanderbilt 2, No. 13 East
Carolina 0Saturday: No. 13 East Carolina vs. No. 4
Vanderbilt, Noonx-Sunday: No. 13 East Carolina vs. No. 4
VanderbiltAt Tucson, Ariz.
Friday: No. 5 Arizona 9, No. 12 Mississippi3
Saturday: No. 12 Mississippi vs. No. 5 Arizona
x-Sunday: No. 12 Mississippi vs. No. 5Arizona
At Columbia, S.C.Saturday: �Dallas Baptist �at VirginiaSunday: �Dallas Baptist �vs. Virginiax-Monday: �Dallas Baptist �vs. Virginia
At Starkville, Miss.Saturday: No. 10 Notre Dame at No. 7
Mississippi St.Sunday: No. 10 Notre Dame vs. No. 7 Mis
sissippi St.x-Monday: No. 10 Notre Dame vs. No. 7
Mississippi St.At Lubbock, Texas
Friday: No. 9 Stanford 15, No. 8 TexasTech 3
Saturday: No. 9 Stanford vs. No. 8 TexasTech
x-Sunday: No. 9 Stanford vs. No. 8 TexasTech
French OpenFriday
At Stade Roland GarrosParis
Purse: Euro 16,404,509Surface: Red clay
Men’s SinglesSemifinals
Stefanos Tsitsipas (5), Greece, def. Alexander Zverev (6), Germany, 63, 63, 46,46, 63.
Novak Djokovic (1), Serbia, def. RafaelNadal (3), Spain, 36, 63, 76 (4), 62.
Women’s DoublesSemifinals
Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova (2), Czech Republic, def. Magda Linette, Poland, and Bernarda Pera, UnitedStates, 61, 62.
Bethanie MattekSands, United States,and Iga Swiatek (14), Poland, def. IrinaCamelia Begu, Romania, and Nadia Podoroska, Argentina, 63, 64.
Mercedes CupFriday
At Tennis Club WeissenhofStuttgart, GermanyPurse: Euro 543,210
Surface: GrassMen’s SinglesQuarterfinals
Sam Querrey, United States, def. Dominic Stephan Stricker, Switzerland, 67 (4),76 (4), 63.
Felix AugerAliassime (3), Canada, def.Ugo Humbert (6), France, 76 (5), 76 (8).
Marin Cilic, Croatia, def. Denis Shapovalov (1), Canada, 75, 76 (3).
Jurij Rodionov, Austria, def. Alex de Minaur (4), Australia, 36, 63, 76 (4).
Men’s DoublesQuarterfinals
Santiago Gonzalez, Mexico, and Marcelo Demoliner, Brazil, def. Lukasz Kubot andHubert Hurkacz, Poland, 64, 64.
Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni,Argentina, def. Dustin Brown and AndreBegemann, Germany, 67 (5), 64, 106.
Marin Cilic and Ivan Dodig, Croatia, def.Yannick Hanfmann and Dominik Koepfer,Germany, walkover.
Gonzalo Escobar, Ecuador, and Ariel Be
har, Uruguay, def. Philipp Oswald, Austria,and Marcus Daniell (4), New Zealand, 76(8), 76 (5).
Nottingham OpenFriday
At Nottingham Tennis CentreNottingham, Great Britain
Purse: $235,238Surface: Grass
Women’s SinglesQuarterfinals
Johanna Konta (1), Britain, def. Alisonvan Uytvanck (8), Belgium, 63, 76 (6).
Nina Stojanovic (15), Serbia, def. TerezaMartincova, Czech Republic, 62, 64.
Zhang Shuai (4), China, def. Kristina Mladenovic (7), France, 36, 62, 76 (4).
Lauren Davis (14), United States, def. Katie Boulter, Britain, 67 (6), 20, ret.
Women’s DoublesQuarterfinals
Ankita Raina, India, and Julia Wachaczyk, Germany, def. Kaitlyn Christian, United States, and Nao Hibino (4), Japan, walkover.
SemifinalsLyudmyla Kichenok, Ukraine, and Mako
to Ninomiya (3), Japan, def. Johanna Konta, Britain, and Donna Vekic, Croatia, walkover.
Croatia OpenFriday
Bol, CroatiaPurse: Euro 92,742Surface: Red clayWomen’s Singles
SemifinalsJasmine Paolini (3), Italy, def. Anna Blin
kova (1), Russia, 62, 62. Arantxa Rus (2), Netherlands, def. Irina
Bara, Romania, 62, 61. Women’s Doubles
SemifinalsKatarzyna Kawa, Poland, and Aliona Bol
sova Zadoinov, Spain, def. Sara Errani, Italy, and Lara Arruabarrena, Spain, 64, 67(3), 108.
Ekaterine Gorgodze, Georgia, and Tereza Mihalikova, Slovakia, def. Arantxa Rus,Netherlands, and Viktoria Kuzmova (1),Slovakia, 57, 63, 107.
PRO TENNIS
DEALS
Friday’s transactionsBASEBALL
Major League BaseballAmerican League
BALTIMORE ORIOLES — Reinstated OFAustin Hays from the 10day IL. ClearedRHP Shawn Armstrong off waivers thensent outright to Norfolk (TripleA East).
CLEVELAND INDIANS — Optioned OF Jordan Luplow to Columbus (TripleA East)on a rehab assignment.
HOUSTON ASTROS — Sent C Jason Castro to Sugar Land (TripleA West) on a rehab assignment. Placed RHP Enoli Paredes on the 10day IL. Recalled RHP RalphGarza from Sugar Land.
KANSAS CITY ROYALS — Sent RHP JakeNewberry outright to Omaha (TripleAEast).
MINNESOTA TWINS — Optioned 2B LuisArraez to St. Paul (TripleA East) on a rehab assignment.
SEATTLE MARINERS — Reinstated RHPJustin Dunn and RHP Kendall Gravemanfom the 10day IL. Optioned RHP KenyanMiddleton to Tacoma (TripleA West).Designated RHP Yacksel Rios for assignment.
TAMPA BAY RAYS — Designated C DeivyGrullon for assignment.
TORONTO BLUE JAYS — Reinstated INFCavan Biggio from the 10day IL. OptionedINF Santiago Expinal to Buffalo (TripleAEast).
National LeagueCHICAGO CUBS — Selected the contract
of C Jose Lobaton from Iowa (TripleAEast). Designated RHP Dakota Chalmersfor assignment. Placed C P.J. Higgins onthe 10day IL.
CINCINNATI REDS — Placed RHP TejayAntone on the 10day IL, retroactive toJune 8. Signed 1B Logan Morrison to a minor league contract.
MIAMI MARLINS — Signed LHP MasonMelatokis to a minor league contract.
NEW YORK METS — Claimed RHP NickTropeano off waivers from San Franciscothen optioned to Syracuse (TripleA East).Transferred RHP Tommy Hunter from the10day IL to the 60day IL. Reinstated INFLuis Guillorme from the 10day IL. Optioned INF Travis Blankenhorn to Syracuse(TripleA East).
ST. LOUIS CARDINALS — Reinstated SSPaul DeJong from the 10day IL. OptionedOF Justin Williams to Memphis (TripleAEast) on a rehab assignment.
SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS — Acquired LHPMichael Plassmeyer from Tampa Bay inexchange for RHP Matt Wisler and cashconsiderations then optioned him to Richmond (DoubleA Northeast). Purchasedthe contract of RHP Akeel Morris fromLong Island (Atlantic League). ReinstatedLHP Caleb Baragar from the 10day IL andrehab assignment. Optioned INF ThairoEstrada to Sacramento (TripleA West).Ourighted LHP Scott Kazmir after clearingwaivers to Sacramento.
BASKETBALLWomen’s Basketball Association
MINNESOTA LYNX �— Waived G LayshiaClarendon.
FOOTBALLNational Football League
BALTIMORE RAVENS — Signed LB OdafeOweh to a fouryear contract. AnnouncedNick Matteo promoted to vice president offootball administration, Andrew Raphaelpromoted to national scout, Joey Clearypromoted to southeast area scout, CoreyFrazier promoted to west coast area scoutand Chas Stallard promoted to southwestarea scout.
CHICAGO BEARS — Signed QB JustinFields.
DALLAS COWBOYS — Signed WR ReggieDavis to a contract. Signed DT Osa Odighizuwa to a rookie contract. Waived OL Justin Skule.
JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS — Signed SAndre Cisco.
NEW ORLEANS SAINTS — Placed QBDrew Brees on the reserve/retired list.
NEW YORK JETS — Signed S SharrodNeasman. Placed OL Parker Ferguson oninjured reserve.
PHILADELPHIA EAGLES — Resigned TERichard Rodgers. Agreed to terms with WRMichael Walker.
SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS — Signed G SenioKelemente. Waived OL Justin Skule withan injury designation.
SEATTLE SEAHAWKS — Waived DB LaDarius Wiley.
HOCKEYNational Hockey League
BUFFALO SABRES — Signed F JohnJasonPeterka to a threeyear contract.
SOCCERMajor League Soccer
LOS ANGELES FC — Loaned G TomasRomero, Ds Mohamed Traore and Tony Leone, Fs Mamadou Fall, Bryce Duke, AlvaroQuezada, Christian Torres and Cal Jennings to Las Vegas (USL Championship).
MINNESOTA UNITED FC — Signed F Hassani Dotson to a threeyear contract witha oneyear option.
Palmetto ChampionshipPGA Tour
FridayAt Congaree Golf Club
Ridgeland, S.C.Yardage: 7,655; Par: 71
Purse: $7.3 MillionSecond Round
Chesson Hadley 65-66—131 -11 Dustin Johnson 65-68—133 -9Tain Lee 67-68—135 -7 Harris English 67-69—136 -6Chez Reavie 67-69—136 -6Erik van Rooyen 65-71—136 -6Pat Perez 70-66—136 -6 Seamus Power 70-66—136 -6Wilco Nienaber 68-68—136 -6Garrick Higgo 68-69—137 -5Rob Oppenheim 69-68—137 -5Doc Redman 65-72—137 -5 Patrick Rodgers 67-70—137 -5Henrik Norlander 70-68—138 -4Hudson Swafford 68-70—138 -4Jhonattan Vegas 66-72—138 -4Tyrrell Hatton 71-68—139 -3
Mediheal ChampionshipLPGA Tour
FridayAt Lake Merced Golf Club
Daly City, Calif.Purse: $1.5 million
Yardage: 6,589; Par: 72Second Round
Danielle Kang 71-66—137 -7Lauren Kim 69-69—138 -6Leona Maguire 65-73—138 -6Min Lee 70-69—139 -5Matilda Castren 71-69—140 -4Jenny Coleman 71-69—140 -4Jane Park 69-71—140 -4Alison Lee 68-72—140 -4Charley Hull 73-68—141 -3Yu Liu 72-69—141 -3Jenny Shin 72-69—141 -3Yealimi Noh 72-69—141 -3A Lim Kim 72-69—141 -3Angel Yin 72-69—141 -3Su Oh 71-70—141 -3Lauren Stephenson 70-71—141 -3Patty Tavatanakit 70-71—141 -3
American Family InsuranceChampionshipChampions Tour
FridayAt University Ridge Golf Course
Madison, Wis.Purse: $2.4 million
Yardage: 7,083; Par: 72First Round
Miguel Angel Jiménez 31-34—65 -7Jerry Kelly 34-33—67 -5Jim Furyk 34-34—68 -4Fred Couples 33-35—68 -4Retief Goosen 34-34—68 -4Ken Tanigawa 33-35—68 -4Colin Montgomerie 33-35—68 -4Wes Short, Jr. 32-36—68 -4Ken Duke 33-36—69 -3Rod Pampling 33-36—69 -3Robert Karlsson 34-35—69 -3Brandt Jobe 36-33—69 -3Scott Dunlap 36-33—69 -3Esteban Toledo 34-35—69 -3Steve Stricker 35-35—70 -2Bernhard Langer 34-36—70 -2
GOLF
AP SPORTLIGHT
June 13
1913 — James Rowe, who had won backtoback Belmont Stake races in 187273 asa jockey, sets the record for the most number of Belmont Stakes wins by a trainer,eight, when he sends Prince Eugene to victory.
1935 — Jim Braddock scores a 15roundunanimous decision over Max Baer in NewYork to win the world heavyweight title.
1953 — Ben Hogan wins the U.S. Open forthe fourth time, with a sixstroke victoryover Sam Snead.
1993 — Patty Sheehan wins the LPGAChampionship for a third time, with a 2under 69 for a onestroke victory over LauriMerten.
Euro 2020 game stopped
after player collapses COPENHAGEN — The Eu-
ropean Championship game be-
tween Denmark and Finland was
suspended Saturday after Chris-
tian Eriksen needed urgent med-
ical attention on the field near the
end of the first half.
Eriksen was given treatment for
about 10 minutes after collapsing
on the field before being carried
off on a stretcher. UEFA then an-
nounced the game had been sus-
pended “due to a medical emer-
gency.”
A stadium announcer asked
fans to stay in their seats until fur-
ther information could be provid-
ed.
Eriksen had just played a short
pass when he fell face-forward on-
to the ground. His teammates im-
mediately gestured for help and
medics rushed onto the field. Erik-
sen was given chest compressions
as his teammates stood around
him in a shielding wall for privacy.
The Finland players huddled by
their bench and eventually walk-
ed off the field while Eriksen was
still getting treatment, as did the
referees.
Eriksen was eventually carried
off to a loud ovation, with his team-
mates walking next to the stretch-
er.
Hadley up two strokes
in PGA Tour eventRIDGELAND, S.C. — Chesson
Hadley is off to his best start on the
PGA Tour since 2016, shooting a 5-
under 66 on Friday for a two-
stroke lead over Dustin Johnson in
the Palmetto Championship at
Congaree.
Hadley was at 11-under 131 at
Congaree Golf Club, his lowest to-
tal through 36 holes since the The
RSM Classic in 2016.
The top-ranked Johnson, who
opened his afternoon round five
shots behind early starter Hadley,
was tied for the lead through 17
holes.
But Johnson drove the ball left
on No. 18 and into a thick, deeply
rooted patch of tall grass. He took
an unplayable lie, hit his third shot
over the green and made a double-
bogey 6 for a 68. Still, at 9-under
133, he had his best 36-hole start
since winning the Travelers al-
most a year ago.
American Tain Lee, in just his
third career PGA Tour event, was
third at 7 under after a 68. A group
of six that included Harris English
and South Africa’s Erik van
Rooyen were five shots behind at 6
under.
Hadley followed an opening 65
with seven birdies and two bogeys
to top the leaderboard. Coming in,
he had missed the cut in 10 of his
past 12 events.
“I definitely didn’t see this com-
ing,” he said.
Associated Press
BRIEFLY
PAGE 20 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
COLLEGE BASEBALL/FRENCH OPEN
Vanderbilt’s Kumar Rocker and Stan
ford’s Brendan Beck turned in dominant
pitching performances in NCAA super re
gionals Friday to put their teams on the cusp
of berths in the College World Series.
Rocker led the reigning national cham
pion Commodores to a 20 victory over East
Carolina in Nashville, and Beck held down
one of the nation’s top offensive teams in a
153 win over Texas Tech in Lubbock, Tex
as.
No. 1 national seed Arkansas made fast
work of North Carolina State in the opener
of its bestofthree series, getting a grand
slam from Cullen Smith and two homers
from Robert Moore in a 212 win in Fayette
ville, Ark. It was the largest margin of victo
ry in super regionals since the tournament
went to its current format in 1999.
Tony Bullard continued his threeweek
offensive surge, homering twice and tripli
ng to lead Arizona past Mississippi 93 in
Tucson, Ariz.
Rocker, who could be the first player tak
en in the Major League Baseball draft next
month, allowed three hits and struck out 11
in 72⁄�3 innings in what was probably his final
appearance at Hawkins Field. In the region
al opener against Presbyterian last week, he
threw seven innings of twohit shutout ball
for No. 4 national seed Vandy (4415).
Stanford’s Beck (91) went to the mound
in the bottom of the first inning with a four
run lead. He had 02 counts on 18 of the 30
batters he faced and struck out a career
high 13 in 71⁄�3 innings. He gave up two runs
and was never stressed after the No. 9 Car
dinal (3715) scored four times in the first on
a homer by Tim Tawa and three straight
RBI singles.
The Razorbacks’ 21 runs were their most
in 162 alltime NCAA Tournament games
and the most allowed by the Wolfpack in
123.
MARK HUMPHREY/AP
Vanderbilt pitcher Kumar Rocker deliversagainst East Carolina during Friday’s superregional in Nashville, Tenn.
NCAA SUPER REGIONALS
Vanderbilt,Stanforddominate
BY ERIC OLSON
Associated Press
PARIS — Thinking of her late coach the
whole time, Barbora Krejcikova went from
unseeded to Grand Slam champion at the
French Open.
Krejcikova beat 31stseeded Anastasia
Pavlyuchenkova 61, 26, 64 in the final at
Roland Garros on Saturday to win the title in
just her fifth major tournament as a singles
player.
When it ended with Pavlyuchenkova’s
backhand landing long on the fourth match
point for Krejcikova, a 25yearold from the
Czech Republic, they met at the net for a hug.
Then Krejcikova blew kisses, her eyes
squeezed shut, in tribute to her former
coach, Jana Novotna, the 1998 Wimbledon
champion who died of cancer in 2017.
“Pretty much her last words were just en
joy and just try to win a Grand Slam. And, I
mean, I know that, from somewhere, she’s
looking after me,” Krejcikova told the crowd
at Court Philippe Chatrier, limited to 5,000
because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“All of this that just happened, these two
weeks, is pretty much because she is just
looking after me from up there,” Krejcikova
said, lifting her left hand toward the sky. “It
was amazing that I had a chance to meet her
and that she was such an inspiration for me. I
just really miss her. But I hope she’s happy
right now. I’m extremely happy.”
Krejcikova is the third unseeded women’s
champion since 2017 at Roland Garros.
There were zero from 1968 through 2016.
She now will try to become the first wom
an since Mary Pierce in 2000 to win the
French Open singles and doubles titles in the
same year. Krejcikova and partner Katerina
Siniakova already own two Grand Slam dou
bles titles and reached Sunday’s final of that
event.
Pavlyuchenkova, a 29yearold Russian,
was playing in her first Grand Slam final in
the 52nd major tournament of her career —
the most appearances by a woman before re
aching a title match.
“Since (I was) a little girl, I was thinking if
one day I will be standing here, I was prepar
ing a speech all the time when I was little.
What I could have said. What I would say.
Right now, I have no words, actually. I forgot
everything that I was preparing,” said Pav
lyuchenkova, who was treated for a left leg
problem late in the second set.
“In the last point, I think I was dead,” she
said. “I don’t have any more fuel.”
This was only the second WTA singles title
for Krejcikova — and they’ve come in her
past two tournaments.
She is the sixth consecutive firsttime
Grand Slam champion to collect the wom
en’s championship at Roland Garros, where
the red clay can frustrate players by dimin
ishing the effectiveness of speedy serves
and by creating odd bounces.
THIBAULT CAMUS/AP
The Czech Republic’s Barbora Krejcikova reacts Saturday after defeating Russia’sAnastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the women’s singles final of the French Open at RolandGarros Stadium in Paris. Krejcikova won 61, 26, 64.
Krejcikova wins 1stSlam title in Paris
AP tennis writer Howard Fendrich in Washington contributed tothis report.
Czech player pays tribute to late former coachBY SAMUEL PETREQUIN
Associated Press
As big a deal, as significant an accom
plishment, as it was for Novak Djokovic to
eliminate Rafael Nadal in the French Open
semifinals, there is still another match to
play in Paris.
And that fourset, fourhourplus victory
over 13time Roland Garros champion Na
dal really won’t mean much to Djokovic in
the scheme of things if he can’t finish the job
Sunday by beating Stefanos Tsitsipas, too.
“It’s not the first time that I play an epic
semifinal in a Grand Slam and then I have to
come back in less than 48 hours and play a
final. My recovery abilities are pretty good,
I must say, throughout my career,” Djokov
ic said. “I know what I need to do. Obvious
ly, Tsitsipas, first time in the finals of a
Grand Slam, if I’m not mistaken — for him,
it’s a great achievement, but I’m sure he
doesn’t want to stop there.”
Neither, of course, does Djokovic.
He doesn’t enter Grand Slam tourna
ments to get to finals (this will be his 29th, 28
more than his much younger opponent).
He has made perfectly clear that all he re
ally cares about at this stage of his career is
winning them, and a victory over Tsitsipas
would give the 34yearold from Serbia a
second French Open championship and,
more importantly, a 19th major overall.
That would be Djokovic’s seventh title in
a span of 11 Slams and move him within just
one of the men’srecord 20 accumulated by
his two great rivals, Roger Federer and Na
dal.
There’s also this milestone within reach
for Djokovic, something Federer and Nadal
haven’t done: He can join Rod Laver and
Roy Emerson as the only men in tennis his
tory to win each of the four major tourna
ments at least twice.
Djokovic has won five of their previous
seven encounters, although Tsitsipas did
push him to five sets before losing in the
semifinals of the 2020 French Open.
MICHEL EULER/AP
Serbia’s Novak Djokovic puts his hand onhis heart after defeating Spain’s RafaelNadal in the semifinals on Friday in Paris.
Djokovicgoes after19th major
BY HOWARD FENDRICH
Associated Press
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 21
NBA PLAYOFFS
PlayoffsCONFERENCE SEMIFINALS
(Best-of-seven)x-if necessary
Eastern ConferenceBrooklyn 2, Milwaukee 1
Brooklyn 115, Milwaukee 107Brooklyn 125, Milwaukee 86Milwaukee 86, Brooklyn 83Sunday: at MilwaukeeTuesday: at Brooklynx-Thursday: at Milwaukeex-Saturday, June 19: at Brooklyn
Philadelphia 2, Atlanta 1Atlanta 128, Philadelphia, 124Philadelphia 118, Atlanta 102Friday: Philadelphia 127, Atlanta 111Monday: at AtlantaWednesday: at Philadelphiax-Friday, June 18: at Atlantax-Sunday, June 20: at Philadelphia
Western ConferencePhoenix 3, Denver 0
Phoenix 122, Denver 105Phoenix 123, Denver 98Friday: Phoenix 116, Denver 102Sunday: at Denverx-Tuesday: at Phoenixx-Thursday: at Denverx-Sunday, June 20: at Phoenix
Utah 2, L.A. Clippers 0Utah 112, L.A. Clippers 109Utah 117, L.A. Clippers 111Saturday: at L.A. ClippersMonday: at L.A. Clippersx-Wednesday: at Utahx-Friday, June 18: at L.A. Clippersx-Sunday, June 20: at Utah
Scoreboard
ATLANTA — Joel Embiid kept taking
falls. He also kept rising to his feet.
Nothing was going to take Philadelphia’s
big center off the court with the playoff se-
ries lead on the line.
Embiid scored 27 points and the 76ers
rode a dominant third quarter to a 127-111
victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Friday
night and a 2-1 lead in the Eastern Confer-
ence semifinal series.
Embiid, playing with a cartilage tear in
his right knee, added nine rebounds, eight
assists and three blocked shots. He played
34 minutes despite turning his ankle on one
fall and landing hard on his back on anoth-
er.
“I’m OK,” Embiid said. “I’m standing up.
I’m walking. I finished the game. So I’m
gonna keep getting back up. I’m going to
keep fighting. That’s been me since I’ve
been playing basketball. ... Whatever hap-
pens, get back up and keep it going.”
Tobias Harris had 22 points and Ben
Simmons added 18 to help the 76ers end At-
lanta’s streak of 13 home wins. The 76ers
have taken the series lead with back-to-
back wins.
Simmons has had primary defensive re-
sponsibility against Trae Young, who led
Atlanta with 28 points, in each of the 76ers’
two wins in the series. On Friday night, he
was challenged to take a bigger offensive
role, especially with Embiid facing con-
stant double-teams.
“I was just trying to push the pace and get
in the lane, stay aggressive and get to the
rim, get into a rhythm,” Simmons said. “I
think I did a good job of that in the second
half.”
The 76ers played up to their No. 1 seed,
taking a lead of 22 points and keeping the
advantage in double figures most of the
second half. The Hawks played from be-
hind after their last lead at 11-10.
Trae Young led Atlanta with 28 points.
John Collins had 23 and Bogdan Bogdanov-
ic 19.
Game 4 is Monday night in Atlanta.
The Hawks have difficulty matching up
with Embiid (7-0, 280) but also have size
disadvantages at other spots, including
with the 6-foot-9 Simmons guarding the 6-
foot-1 Young.
“It’s not anything we can’t adjust to,”
Young said.
But when asked what the Hawks can do,
Young added “Obviously, if I had the an-
swers, we wouldn’t be talking about it right
now.”
The 76ers outscored the Hawks 66-58 in
the paint and 15-6 on fast breaks.
“I think their size has had an impact on
this series,” Hawks coach Nate McMillan
said. “They just pretty much pounded us in
the paint tonight.”
After leading 65-60 early in the third pe-
riod, Philadelphia took command with an
11-0 run. The 76ers outscored the Hawks
34-19 in the third period.
Simmons had two baskets during the run,
including a jam for a 76-60 lead.
Atlanta couldn’t regain the momentum
as the 76ers stretched the lead to 20 points,
93-73, late in the period.
Embiid, who faced constant double-
teams from Atlanta’s defense, made 12 of 16
free throws.
Embiid had a scare in the third quarter
when he limped and appeared to be in pain
after grabbing a rebound. Embiid ap-
peared to step awkwardly on Clint Capela’s
foot, turning his ankle.
“He’s playing hard,” said 76ers coach
Doc Rivers. “He’s giving us everything. ...
He is going through a lot, I’ll tell you that.”
Korkmaz emergesAfter Shake Milton energized the 76ers
by scoring 14 points off the bench in Game
2, Philadelphia found bench production
from a different source.
Furkan Korkmaz, who scored a com-
bined seven points in the first two games of
the series, scored 11 points in the opening
period while making two threes. He added
another three in the fourth for 14 points.
“It was huge,” Embiid said. “We got that
early lead because of him.”
Embiid, 76ers take 2-1 lead against Hawks
JOHN BAZEMORE/AP
Hawks forward John Collins, front, and Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid (21) vie for the ball as teammates look on during thesecond half of Game 3 of their secondround playoff series Friday in Atlanta. Embiid scored 27 points in the 76ers’ 127111 victory.
BY CHARLES ODUM
Associated Press
DENVER — Deandre Ayton
scrutinized the box score and
couldn’t believe his eyes as he
read Nikola Jokic’s stat line: 32
points, 20 rebounds, 10 assists.
“That’s insane. That’s the
MVP,” Ayton said after the Phoe-
nix Suns overcame the Joker’s
historic triple-double to thump
Denver 116-102 Friday, putting
the Nuggets on the brink of elim-
ination.
Following a raucous pregame
ceremony celebrating his MVP
award, Jokic joined Wilt Cham-
berlain and Kareem Abdul-Jab-
bar as the only players with 30
points, 20 boards and 10 assists in
an NBA playoff game. Jokic,
though, was apologetic afterward,
telling his teammates this loss
was on him because of his 13-
for-29 shooting performance.
Nonsense, said Denver guard
Monte Morris, who called Jokic’s
performance phenomenal.
“He’s carrying us,” Morris said.
“We’ve got to help him.”
Morris scored 21 off the bench
but Denver’s four other starters
scored just 30 points, half by Mi-
chael Porter Jr., who was 5-for-13
from the floor.
Devin Booker scored 28 points
and teamed with Chris Paul to
lead a steady offensive onslaught
that countered Jokic’s big night.
“We knew this was going to be
an emotional game for them with
Joker being presented with the
trophy before the game,” Paul
said. “We just talked about with-
standing their runs.”
Jokic seemed to consider his
big game more horrific than his-
toric.
“I’m frustrated with myself be-
cause I missed shots,” said Jokic,
who also missed four of nine free
throws. “I didn’t play on top of my
game, especially shooting-wise. It
would be much easier for us if I
started making shots. Of course,
they’re making it tough for me to
make shots.”
With their sixth straight victo-
ry, the second-seeded Suns took a
3-0 lead in the best-of-seven se-
ries. Game 4 is Sunday at Ball
Arena.
Paul had 27 points, eight assists
and three steals for the Suns, who
pulled away after halftime for the
third straight time. All five of
Phoenix’s starters scored in dou-
ble figures.
They are a one win away from
their first trip to the Western Con-
ference Finals since 2009-10 —
which was the last time Phoenix
made the playoffs.
Suns spoil Jokic’s MVP party, beat Nuggets
DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/AP
Denver’s Nikola Jokic accepts theMost Valuable Player awardbefore Game 3 of the Nuggets’secondround series againstPhoenix on Friday in Denver.
Associated Press
PAGE 22 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
NHL PLAYOFFS
Semfinals
(Best-of-seven; x-if necessary)
Vegas vs. Montreal
Monday: at VegasWednesday: at VegasFriday: at MontrealSunday, June 20: at Montrealx-Tuesday, June 22: at Vegasx-Thursday, June 24: at Montrealx-Saturday, June 26: at Vegas
Tampa Bay vs. N.Y. Islanders
Sunday: at Tampa BayTuesday: at Tampa BayThursday: at N.Y. IslandersSaturday: at N.Y. Islandersx-Monday, June 21: at Tampa Bayx-Wednesday, June 23: at N.Y. Islandersx-Friday, June 25: at Tampa Bay
Scoreboard
scout or prepare for them.
“Different season for every-
one,” Canadiens coach Domin-
ique Ducharme said. “Different
style of play or different teams
that you play often, but that’s part
of the challenge for everyone right
now.”
If Montreal-Vegas, which be-
gins Monday night, goes the dis-
tance, the teams will face off more
times during one playoff series
than they have all-time in the reg-
ular season, because the Golden
Knights began playing in 2017.
The Lightning and Islanders
grinded out a six-game series nine
months ago in the postseason bub-
ble in Edmonton, Alberta, so there
will be some familiarity when the
puck drops Sunday afternoon in
Tampa.
“It helps a little bit,” Islanders
coach Barry Trotz said. “Most of
our players played in that series,
so they understand when we’re
talking about certain trends or the
way they play.”
Tampa Bay won that series last
fall before beating Dallas and
hoisting the Stanley Cup. With the
Lightning, Islanders and Golden
Knights in the semifinals again,
the NHL has three of the same
teams in the final four for the first
time since 1991 and 1992.
Vegas center Mattias Janmark
and Montreal winger Corey Perry
are back in the third round after
going on a run to the final with
Dallas.
Perry said watching games in
other divisions helps get past the
uncertainty.
“I think you look at our two
teams and there’s four lines on
both sides, six D, and two great
world-class goalies are going to go
battle head-to-head,” Perry said.
“It’s going to be fun.”
The Lightning are having fun
with 2019 MVP Nikita Kucherov
back after missing the regular
season recovering from hip sur-
gery. Kucherov leads all scorers
with 18 points through two rounds
of the playoffs.
“He’s a tremendous hockey
player,” Islanders GM Lou Lamo-
riello said.
The Islanders remember how
tremendous Kucherov can be, and
Tampa Bay now has captain Ste-
ven Stamkos playing, too. But
each team also knows there are
some differences masked by not
being on the ice together since
September.
“Maybe you wish you had
played them a little more recently,
but at the end of the day, this is the
situation we’ve been dealt,” Light-
ning defenseman Ryan McDo-
nagh said. “We knew if we got to
this point we were going to have to
face a team that we hadn’t played
in the regular season.”
Vegas goes into the semis as the
favorite. The Golden Knights are
the No. 1 seed by virtue of finishing
with the most points and are bat-
tle-tested after needing seven
games to knock off Minnesota and
gutting through a tough second-
round series against Presidents’
Trophy-winning Colorado.
Now to see if the franchise in its
fourth year of existence can hold
off a challenge from an organiza-
tion with 24 Stanley Cup titles to
get to the final.
“I’ve always believed that to win
in the playoffs as you go along, you
have to keep getting better,”
McCrimmon said. “It’s hard to
win. Nothing has been easy for us
in either series that we’ve played.
It’s only going to get tougher as we
move on here to the semifinals.”
FRANK FRANKLIN II/AP
The New York Islanders’ Kyle Palmieri scores past Boston Bruinsgoaltender Tuukka Rask during the second period of Game 6 of theirsecondround playoff series.
AP hockey writer John Wawrow contributed tothis report.
Foes: Lightning-Islesis a repeat of last yearFROM PAGE 24
When the Montreal Canadiens
were one goal away from being
eliminated in the first round, and
then again when they were one
goal away from reaching the Stan-
ley Cup semifinals, Cole Caufield
set up the overtime winner each
time.
Caufield was dominating col-
lege hockey just two months earli-
er and suddenly at age 20 had be-
come a key player for the NHL’s
most storied franchise. Along
with Colorado forwards Alex Ne-
whook and Sampo Ranta, and
Florida goaltender Spencer
Knight, Caufield’s success jump-
ing right into the playoffs fresh off
playing a full college season could
inspire more teams to infuse fresh
blood into their lineups at the
most intense time of year.
“Any team that’s gone through
a year is looking for some sort of
spark, some sort of hope,” said
Tony Granato, who coached Cau-
field at Wisconsin. “There is noth-
ing better for a lineup than young
energy entering the locker room
and being able to add some speed
and young legs into the lineup.
Every team needs it.”
There’s no doubt the Canadiens
needed Caufield. They are 7-1
since he joined their lineup. Mon-
treal’s transformation was so re-
markable even NFL All-Pro J.J.
Watt noticed.
“Caufield has been an absolute
playmaker since being added to
the lineup,” Watt tweeted. “Great
call by whoever suggested that.”
That would be coach Domin-
ique Ducharme, whose trust of
Caufield developed gradually.
While Caufield’s 52 points in 31
games at Wisconsin propelled
him to win the Hobey Baker
Award as the NCAA’s top player,
those didn’t matter much when
transitioning through a quick stint
in the American Hockey League
and joining the Canadiens in
April.
Caufield put up five points in
his first 10 NHL games and has
four important assists in the play-
offs, but the 5-foot-7 dynamo
showing he could hang in the pros
was about more than producing
offensively. Former NHL scout
Dave Starman said Caufield is
more confident than ever hand-
ling the puck in his own zone, and
the commitment to becoming an
all-around player hasn’t gone un-
noticed by his coaching staff.
There’s no choice but to adjust
quickly. Entering a playoff series
midway through can resemble
jumping onto a moving train and
be difficult for even seasoned vet-
erans.
Newhook and Ranta got that
treatment for Colorado after
coach Jared Bednar felt they de-
served a spot in the lineup. Bed-
nar said, “You never know until
you try, and I don’t think you can
be scared to try in a lot of situa-
tions.”
Montreal and Colorado aren’t
the first to try this. The recent his-
tory of players jumping from col-
lege into the NHL playoffs in-
cludes Chris Kreider for the
Rangers in 2012, Charlie McAvoy
for the Bruins in 2017 and Cale
Makar for the Avalanche in 2019.
“Cale and myself, I think we
were put in the lineup for a reason
to help the team win,” said Ne-
whook, who credited Makar for
easing his transition. “(Being)
given the opportunity is obviously
a huge part of it, and then what
you do with it is another.”
GRAHAM HUGHES, THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP
The Canadiens’ Cole Caufield scores against Ottawa Senators’ goaltender Filip Gustavsson during overtimeon May 1 in Montreal. Caufield was dominating college hockey in late March and by late May was a regularin the lineup of the most storied franchise in the NHL, helping Montreal to the third round of the playoffs.
Caufield, college stars add‘young energy’ to playoffs
BY STEPHEN WHYNO
Associated Press
AP hockey writer John Wawrow contributed tothis report.
Sunday, June 13, 2021 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • PAGE 23
MLB
American League
East Division
W L Pct GB
Tampa Bay 40 24 .625 _
Boston 39 25 .609 1
New York 33 30 .524 6½
Toronto 31 30 .508 7½
Baltimore 22 40 .355 17
Central Division
W L Pct GB
Chicago 39 24 .619 _
Cleveland 33 27 .550 4½
Kansas City 30 32 .484 8½
Detroit 26 37 .413 13
Minnesota 25 38 .397 14
West Division
W L Pct GB
Oakland 38 27 .585 _
Houston 36 27 .571 1
Los Angeles 31 32 .492 6
Seattle 31 34 .477 7
Texas 24 40 .375 13½
National League
East Division
W L Pct GB
New York 31 24 .564 _
Philadelphia 30 31 .492 4
Atlanta 29 32 .475 5
Miami 28 35 .444 7
Washington 25 34 .424 8
Central Division
W L Pct GB
Chicago 36 27 .571 _
Milwaukee 36 27 .571 _
St. Louis 32 31 .508 4
Cincinnati 30 31 .492 5
Pittsburgh 23 39 .371 12½
West Division
W L Pct GB
San Francisco 39 23 .629 _
Los Angeles 38 25 .603 1½
San Diego 37 28 .569 3½
Colorado 25 39 .391 15
Arizona 20 44 .313 20
Friday’s games
Tampa Bay 4, Baltimore 2Cleveland 7, Seattle 0Chicago White Sox 5, Detroit 4, 10 in-
ningsBoston 6, Toronto 5Houston 6, Minnesota 4Oakland 4, Kansas City 3L.A. Dodgers 12, Texas 1L.A. Angels 6, Arizona 5, 10 inningsChicago Cubs 8, St. Louis 5San Francisco 1, Washington 0N.Y. Mets 3, San Diego 2Cincinnati 11, Colorado 5Miami 4, Atlanta 3Milwaukee 7, Pittsburgh 4
Saturday’s games
N.Y. Yankees at PhiladelphiaKansas City at OaklandBaltimore at Tampa BayChicago White Sox at DetroitL.A. Angels at ArizonaSeattle at ClevelandToronto at BostonHouston at MinnesotaTexas at L.A. DodgersSan Francisco at Washington (2)Atlanta at MiamiColorado at CincinnatiPittsburgh at MilwaukeeSan Diego at N.Y. MetsSt. Louis at Chicago Cubs
Sunday’s games
N.Y. Yankees (Germán 4-3) at Philadel-phia (Nola 4-4)
Baltimore (Zimmermann 4-3) at TampaBay (TBD)
Chicago White Sox (Rodón 5-2) at Detroit(TBD)
Seattle (Gilbert 1-2) at Cleveland (Bieber7-3)
Toronto (Ray 3-2) at Boston (Pérez 4-3)Houston (Valdez 2-0) at Minnesota
(Pineda 3-3)Kansas City (Bubic 1-1) at Oakland (Bas-
sitt 6-2)San Francisco (Cueto 4-2) at Washing-
ton (Lester 0-2)Atlanta (Smyly 2-3) at Miami (López 2-3)Colorado (Senzatela 2-6) at Cincinnati
(Santillan 0-0)San Diego (Paddack 2-5) at N.Y. Mets
(Lucchesi 1-4)Pittsburgh (Brubaker 4-5) at Milwaukee
(Houser 4-5)L.A. Angels (Sandoval 0-2) at Arizona
(Smith 2-2)Texas (Dunning 2-4) at L.A. Dodgers
(Buehler 5-0)St. Louis (Martínez 3-6) at Chicago Cubs
(TBD)
Scoreboard
CHICAGO — Anthony Rizzo could feel the
fans hanging onto each pitch as he fouled off
one after another.
When he finally launched one over the right-
field wall on the 14th pitch of his at-bat, Wri-
gley Field rocked in a way it hadn’t in years,
with a near-capacity crowd on its feet and roar-
ing.
“It was incredible,” Rizzo said.
Joc Pederson homered and drove in three
runs, Rizzo and Willson Contreras went deep
and the Chicago Cubs beat the St. Louis Cardi-
nals 8-5 on Friday.
Wrigley Field allowed 100% capacity for the
first time since 2019 on what the Cubs called
“Opening Day 2.0.” They fell behind 5-1, then
treated a crowd of 35,112 to a comeback win
over their NL Central rivals.
Mets 3, Padres 2: Jacob deGrom was
pulled from a do-it-all gem with right flexor
tendinitis, a troubling diagnosis for host New
York that clouded a victory over San Diego.
DeGrom (6-2) faced the minimum over six
innings and ripped a two-run single, giving
him five RBIs this season — compared to four
earned runs allowed. He struck out 10 in the
abbreviated outing.
San Diego dropped its third straight. Blake
Snell (2-3) allowed three runs in four-plus in-
nings, and the Padres couldn’t do enough dam-
age against New York’s bullpen.
Giants 1, Nationals 0: Washington ace Max
Scherzer left after just 12 pitches because of
groin inflammation, Buster Posey homered
and visiting San Francisco won on Anthony
DeSclafani’s career-best two-hitter.
A crowd of 18,029 attended the first game at
Nationals Park without capacity limits since
the 2019 World Series.
Scherzer retired leadoff batter LaMonte
Wade Jr. on a fly ball to left and had a 3-2 count
on Brandon Belt when he stretched his body.
He took a warmup toss before exiting.
DeSclafani (6-2) struck out eight and walked
on his his third career shutout and complete
game.
Angels 6, Diamondbacks 5 (10):Shohei Oh-
tani struck out eight, hit two doubles and
pushed through an injury scare to lead visiting
Los Angeles past slumping Arizona.
Max Stassi’s RBI groundout scored Jared
Walsh in the top of the 10th to put the Angels
ahead for good. Extra innings were needed af-
ter Arizona’s Eduardo Escobar hit a two-out,
tying homer off Raisel Iglesias (4-2) in the
ninth.
Arizona lost its eighth in a row and has lost 31
of its last 36. The team’s 20-44 record is the
worst in the big leagues.
Dodgers 12, Rangers 1: Clayton Kershaw
bounced back from two bad outings with six
sharp innings, Gavin Lux drove in four runs
and hit one of his team’s five homers as host
Los Angeles routed Texas.
Max Muncy, Justin Turner and Lux home-
red in the first inning. Albert Pujols and Will
Smith also went deep as Los Angeles won its
fourth in a row and sent Texas to its 16th
straight road loss.
Kershaw (8-5) gave up only one unearned
and three hits. He struck out nine and walked
none.
Athletics 4, Royals 3: Elvis Andrus hit a
winning single in the ninth inning after making
pair of fielding gaffes, and host Oakland beat
Kansas City.
Seth Brown homered to snap a long funk for
the A’s. Matt Chapman had three hits includ-
ing an RBI double.
Kansas City has lost six of seven.
Indians 7, Mariners 0: Aaron Civale gave up
a single to start the game before dominating
Seattle’s light-hitting lineup for eight innings,
leading host Cleveland to the win in front of the
largest crowd at Progressive Field since 2019.
Civale (9-2) allowed J.P. Crawford’s leadoff
hit and nothing else to become the first AL
pitcher with nine wins. He struck out a career-
high 11 and retired 22 in a row after loading the
bases in the first. Blake Parker worked the
ninth to complete the two-hitter.
Rays 4, Orioles 2: At St. Petersburg, Fla.,
Ryan Yarbrough pitched six solid innings and
Tampa Bay became the first team to reach 40
wins this season.
Brandon Lowe homered for the Rays, who
are 21-5 since May 13.
Marlins 4, Braves 3: Jazz Chisholm’s two-
out, two-run single in the fourth inning put his
team ahead to stay, and Miami beat visiting At-
lanta for the fourth time in five meetings this
year.
The Braves have lost three consecutive
games by a run each.
Reds 11, Rockies 5: Joey Votto’s three-run
blast highlighted a five-homer effort as host
Cincinnati extended Colorado’s road woes.
The Rockies fell to 5-25 away from Coors
Field and have lost every road series this sea-
son.
Red Sox 6, Blue Jays 5: Alex Verdugo hit a
line drive off the Green Monster to drive in the
game-winning run in the ninth inning and Bos-
ton rallied from a four-run deficit to beat vis-
iting Toronto.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had three of Toronto’s
16 hits, including his major league-leading 19th
homer of the season, to help the Blue Jays open
afour-run lead in the sixth inning. The Red Sox
scored three in the bottom half and tied it on
Christian Arroyo’s towering solo home run.
Astros 6, Twins 4: Martín Maldonado hit a
go-ahead double in the ninth and Houston beat
host Minnesota.
Jose Altuve and Yuli Gurriel homered and
Alex Bregman drove in two runs for Houston,
which won for the fourth time in five games.
Brewers 7, Pirates 4: Christian Yelich hit a
bases-loaded double that broke a tie and Pitts-
burgh relievers issued three consecutive
bases-loaded walks in a five-run seventh in-
ning that helped fuel host Milwaukee’s win.
White Sox 5, Tigers 4 (10):Liam Hendricks
angrily threw a wet ball into foul territory after
his first pitch of the ninth inning, leading to a
lengthy rain delay, then gave up a tying two-
run homer to Daz Cameron before Chicago
beat host Detroit in 10 innings.
Cubs beat Cards on ‘Opening Day 2.0’
CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/AP
The Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo celebrates his home run off St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Daniel Poncede Leon on the 14th pitch of his atbat during the sixth inning Friday in Chicago.
Associated Press
ROUNDUP
PAGE 24 • S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • Sunday, June 13, 2021
SPORTSFirst-time champion
Krejcikova earns first Slam titleby winning French Open ›› Page 20
Embiid, 76ers take 2-1 lead in series with Hawks ›› NBA playoffs, Page 21
If the teams left in the NHL playoffs are sick
and tired of facing the same opponents over
and over, they are in luck in the semifinals.
After exclusively divisional play this sea-
son and through the first two rounds, the
hockey playoffs are down to a final four of teams that
haven’t played each other all year. The New York Is-
landers face the Tampa Bay Lightning in one semi-
final that’s a rematch of the 2020 Eastern Conference
finals, while the Vegas Golden Knights play the Mon-
treal Canadiens in a playoff series for the first time.
After so much familiarity from seeing the same
teams over and over, the final two rounds bring every
element of the unknown.
“It’s such a different series in terms of the prep-
aration,” Vegas general manager Kelly McCrimmon
said. “Now with the Islanders and Tampa Bay, our
own series with Montreal, it’s brand new. Starting
from scratch.”
The league that has emphasized rivalries for dec-
ades limited play within four remade divisions for
one season only because of the pandemic. It allowed
all 31 teams to complete a condensed, 56-game sched-
ule with 16 making the playoffs.
New York emerged from the East, Tampa Bay the
Central, Vegas the West and Montreal the North.
Players and coaches from these teams haven’t
thought much about each other all season, let alone
Tampa Bay Lightning left wing Pat Maroon(14) congratulates center Ross Colton (79)following Colton’s goal against the CarolinaHurricanes during the third period of Game 5of their secondround series.
GERRY BROOME/AP
JOHN LOCHER/AP
Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Alec Martinez, left, andgoaltender MarcAndre Fleury celebrate after defeating the ColoradoAvalanche in Game 6 to close out their secondround series.
Unfamiliar foesDivisional play prevented final fourteams from facing off this season
BY STEPHEN WHYNO
Associated Press
NHL PLAYOFFS
SEE FOES ON PAGE 22