Vice President Mike Pence scolded the NBA and Nike on Thursday for backing down from support for Hong Kong protesters after China complained.

“Some of the NBA’s biggest players and owners, who routinely exercise their freedom to criticize this country, lose their voices when it comes to the freedom and rights of the people of China,” Pence said in a speech about the Trump administration’s China policy in Washington.

The NBA has been embroiled in controversy after a Houston Rockets executive tweeted in support of protests in Hong Kong. The tweet was deleted, but China reacted swiftly, canceling player appearances in the country. The NBA’s media partner in China also said it would not air two preseason games played there.

Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James was critical of the pro-Hong Kong protests tweet sent by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey, saying that there were negative ramifications.

“In siding with the Chinese Communist Party and silencing free speech, the NBA is acting like a wholly owned subsidiary of that authoritarian regime,” Pence said.

He also called out Nike for removing Houston Rockets merchandise from stores in China and said the move was un-American.

President Trump has faced some criticism, himself, for not speaking out forcefully to support Hong Kong protesters in the days after they began. Trump is hoping next month to sign what he calls “phase one” of a larger trade deal with China.

Pence said the U.S. stands with Hong Kong protesters and urged restraint on the part of China. He said “it would be much harder for us to make a trade deal if the authorities resort to the use of violence against protesters in Hong Kong.”

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Updated at 5 a.m. ET Thursday

The Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros 12-3 in Game 2 of the 2019 World Series in Houston.

The Nationals broke through what had been a pitchers’ duel with six runs in the seventh inning as Washington sent 10 batters to the plate.

The Nats opened the game by scoring two runs with a walk and a single, followed by a double by third baseman and Houston native Anthony Rendon off of Astros ace Justin Verlander.

“This is my city. I love Houston,” Rendon said, according to The Associated Press. “We were going to try to just steal one game and we just happened to steal two, and we’ve got to take care of business at home.”

The Astros came back in the bottom of the first frame with two runs off of Nationals starter Stephen Strasburg on a home run by third baseman Alex Bregman after left fielder Michael Brantley had singled.

Both starters — Verlander and Strasburg — settled into a groove after the first inning, each allowing no runs for five innings.

But the wheels came off for the Astros in the top of the seventh inning starting with a solo homer by catcher Kurt Suzuki. They walked three batters, including the Astros’ first deliberate walk of the season, of the young star Juan Soto, loading the bases with two outs.

But that was followed by three singles and defensive lapses by the Astros which produced six runs that stunned the Houston crowd. As the seventh inning ended, many in the crowd began heading for the exits.

The Nationals added two more runs in the top of the eighth inning on a homer by right fielder Adam Eaton and another run in the ninth on a solo shot by center fielder Michael Taylor.

The Astros scored one run in the bottom of the ninth on a solo homer by catcher Martín Maldonado. But by then the game was all but over.

Astros manager AJ Hinch made no excuses.

“We have a really good team,” Hinch said, according to the AP. “Clearly, the Nats have outplayed us – bottom line. They came into our building and played two really good games. We’re going to have to try to sleep off the latter third of this game.”

By taking two games in Houston, the Nationals managed to do something few would have predicted: they beat the Astros’ two aces — Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander — on consecutive nights.

The Nationals now lead the best-of-seven series 2-0 as the series heads for Washington, D.C. Friday night. Nationals Park will host the first World Series game to be played in the nation’s capital since 1933.

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Nobody knows exactly how many fighting roosters there are in Puerto Rico. The breeders who raise them for cockfights say at least half a million. Two hundred and fifty of those live in neatly lined cages in José Torres’ backyard in the mountain town of Utuado, and should the police show up to take them when cockfighting is banned at the end of this year, he has no plans to give them up.

“I already told my wife and I told my mother,” Torres said, “that anyone who comes and tries to take one of my roosters will have to kill me first. And I’m not the only one. There are thousands of us.”

In the rural mountains of central Puerto Rico, cockfighting is culture. It took root during Spanish colonial times. It survived a three-decade prohibition imposed by the United States in the early 20th century. And though the recession that has hollowed out the island’s rural towns for the last decade has also taken its toll on cockfighting, the practice has persisted in dozens of family-run arenas across the island, a pastime and livelihood for thousands of families.

But now legal cockfighting on the island is in its death throes. After years of lobbying, animal rights advocates in the U.S. last December convinced Congress to ban the blood sport in U.S. territories, the last places under federal jurisdiction where it is still allowed.

People like José Torres, who raises and trains other people’s roosters for fights, will see their livelihoods vanish.

“I’m a sixth-generation cockfighter,” Torres said. “This is how I support my family. But I also inherited this. I was going to pass this onto my children.”

The ban takes effect Dec. 20, and in recession-weary Puerto Rico, few people doubt that the end of regulated cockfighting will drive more families into poverty. Many cockfighters expect to leave the island altogether, joining the hundreds of thousands who in recent years have fled Puerto Rico’s economic turmoil and the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

“Cockfighting is a multi-million-dollar industry,” said Gerardo Mora, the Puerto Rican government official who regulates the island’s 64 licensed cockfighting arenas. “Breeders, trainers, veterinarians, grain distributors, medication, spurs, cages. So it’s lamentable that people who don’t understand Puerto Rico’s idiosyncrasies would, in the name of benevolence, make unjust decisions to eliminate our national sport.”

The federal effort to eradicate cockfighting on the island will be a tall order. Many Puerto Ricans, including some elected officials, have vowed to defy the ban, calling it an attack on Puerto Rican culture. Across the island, cockfighters are preparing to take the sport underground. And like José Torres, many say they’re prepared to defend their roosters with their lives, raising the specter of violent standoffs.

Considering cockfighting’s cultural and economic importance, Mora said it’s no surprise – in fact, it’s fitting — that cockfighters would be willing to defend their roosters with their blood.

“Without a doubt, there will be conflict,” he said. “Such is the pride of Puerto Rico’s cockfighters.”

‘Cruelty is not culture’

While the island’s flashiest cockfighting arenas are in big cities like San Juan, more typical are the ones like the Gallera Borinquén in the municipality of Arecibo, said to be among Puerto Rico’s oldest. It’s a squat rectangular building tucked off a road that winds through Puerto Rico’s inland mountains. By 2 p.m. on a Saturday, the grassy lot is filled with cars, and the cacophony of crowing roosters fills the air.

Inside, fighters line up to register and weigh their birds, and then roam the room in search of a willing opponent. They use hot glue to affix their roosters’ feet with plastic spurs for piercing their rivals’ flesh. A judge administers a quick test for illegal substances.

The spectators – mostly men – settle into the seats encircling the ring. Some shout across the room to place bets with others in the audience. The sound of a buzzer announces the first match, and the two birds are released into the pit.

The first fight lasts only a few seconds. In the initial thrashing of beaks and feet, the plastic spike on one of the birds’ legs impales its opponent’s brain, killing it quickly. But on this Saturday, the ringside judge ends most of the matches when one of the roosters, punctured and bloody and bruised, simply can’t muster the energy to keep fighting.

José Torres is here, and he’s brought his 10-year-old son, José Yadiel, who spends his time asking the owners of vanquished birds whether, rather than put them down, he can take them home.

“If they can be healed, we should try to heal them,” Torres said. “You can’t lose your affection for a rooster just because he lost a fight.”

He said such respect for the animal and for your opponents, regardless of a fight’s outcome, is why many cockfighters refer to their pastime as the “gentleman’s sport.”

But Kitty Block, the president of the Humane Society of the United States, the group that lobbied Congress to extend the cockfighting ban to Puerto Rico, said tossing animals into a ring to tear each other apart is anything but gentlemanly.

“Cruelty is not culture. And it’s important to look at what it is, and what it’s doing to the animals,” Block said. “These are birds that are armed with weapons, and they slash eyes out, and it’s just a brutal blood sport that should’ve gone a long time ago.”

The ban, inserted into last year’s federal farm bill, has been a long-sought goal of the Humane Society’s — the culmination of broader efforts to bring an end to all spectator sports that pit animals against each other.

Block said the fact that many Puerto Ricans make a living off cockfighting did not justify its practice.

At the Gallera Borinquén, most cockfighters shake their heads in frustration over such concerns.

“These roosters are born to fight, they’re bred for this, it’s in their genes,” said Luis Ángel del Valle. “What’s cruel is what these people are doing to us.”

Like many here, del Valle sees the ban through the lens of the U.S. government’s long history of cultural imposition on Puerto Rico, beginning with the first time it banned cockfighting on the island in 1899, a year after invading it during the Spanish-American War. That ban lasted 34 years. When del Valle heard that this latest ban had passed last December, he thought of his grandfather, who used to ride his mule across the island attending cockfights.

“He used to tell me about these senators who would come from the United States and visit the poor areas of Puerto Rico and thought they had all the answers,” del Valle said. “They were sharp. They knew how to get what they wanted. Now they’re here again, trying to take cockfighting away from us, and we aren’t going to let them. Like our roosters, we’re going to fight to the end.”

‘People have mixed feelings’

After Governor Robert Gore, appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt, signed a bill allowing regulated cockfighting to resume in 1933, the sport flourished for most of the twentieth century. But for the better part of this century, it’s been in decline.

In 1985, a million and a half people attended cockfights at 132 licensed arenas, according to island government figures. For the next 20 years annual attendance hovered at around a million. The dip began in 2005, just as Puerto Rico’s economy began to crash and hundreds of thousands of people — mostly from the island’s rural, mountainous interior, where cockfighting is most popular – began leaving for the United States. By 2016, annual attendance had fallen to just 330,000 at the 83 licensed arenas that remained. And that was before Hurricane Maria, which destroyed another 20.

Despite this, the island’s cockfighters remain a politically potent force. Not a single local politician openly opposes cockfighting, nor are there local citizen movements against it.

Juan Llanes Santos, a historian who’s tried to get some of the island’s cockfighting arenas listed as historic places, said the reason there isn’t more organized opposition to cockfighting is partly rooted in Puerto Rico’s political situation.

As a U.S. territory, it has no voting representation in Congress, nor can its residents vote for president. As a result, many people call it the world’s oldest colony.

“So people have mixed feelings,” Llanes said, “they may not like the sport, but on the other hand they object to outsiders dictating what cultural practices we can engage in. It’s about being able to define Puerto Rican identity for ourselves.”

‘They’ll have to do it alone!’

In late January, six weeks after the congressional ban was approved, close to 2,000 cockfighters descended on the capital, San Juan. As they marched to the capitol building, many hoisted roosters into the air.

What, they demanded to know, were the island’s legislators going to do to save cockfighting?

Few of the local politicians who took turns climbing into the bed of the pickup truck leading the protesters through the streets could offer much more than vociferous solidarity. But when San Juan’s mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, took her turn, she made the crowd roar.

“Here in San Juan,” the mayor bellowed, “no city police officer, no city employee will intervene to stop a cockfight. If federal agents want to, they’ll have to do it alone!”

She said San Juan’s city council had already adopted a policy to that effect, and that mayors from across the island were calling her requesting the language so they could draft similar ordinances.

“This is not about politics!” Yulín cried. “This is about defending our culture, and our sport!”

In the months that followed, some politicians, including, most recently, Governor Wanda Vázquez, signed onto a lawsuit that leaders of the cockfighting industry filed challenging the ban in federal court.

In an effort to prevent more of Puerto Rico’s cockfighting arenas from falling victim to abandonment and disrepair, over the summer the island’s lawmakers passed a bill giving the buildings’ owners the option to convert them into gambling halls.

In June, the president of Puerto Rico’s Senate spent $36,000 to have a bronze sculpture of a crowing rooster installed on the lawn of the capitol building.

And for months, Gerardo Mora, the island’s cockfighting regulator, has been attending cockfights to urge people who make a living off the sport to begin making other plans.

“Federal law supersedes local law,” he tells them, “and as much as I’d like to override that, I can’t.”

‘It’s the pride’

Ban or no ban, Johnny Ríos has no intention of ever quitting.

Such is his passion for cockfighting that his left arm sports a tattoo of a gamecock encircled by the words “tradition” and “culture.” Such is his passion that on his wedding day, he left his bride at the reception and went to the fights. Such is his passion that during the 40 years he lived in New York, he said, he kept roosters in the closet of his Brooklyn apartment. He was arrested for illegal cockfighting dozens of times, but that never stopped him.

“You think that if I did it in New York, that now that I’m in my home country, and this is a big part of our culture, that I’m going to stop?” he asked. “Because whitey over there put in this law? It’s not going to happen. All they see is two birds fighting. But it’s not just two birds fighting. It’s the economy. It’s the pride. It’s our culture.”

While it’s still unclear how quickly authorities will begin enforcing the prohibition, or which agencies will take charge doing so, in the weeks leading up to December’s ban some bird owners on the island have started putting their birds in to fight at a more urgent pace. Or they’re shipping them to the Dominican Republic, where cockfighting is legal.

But not Ríos. Rather than liquidate, he’s holding steady, and continuing to breed roosters.

Ríos says he plans to go underground.

“Most of the cockfighters are going to continue fighting,” he said. “They’re just going to do it illegally.”

In his estimation there are already more illegal cockfighting venues in Puerto Rico than licensed ones. The federal ban will only create more, he said. In fact, he’s already found sites for two of his own.

One is a house that lost its roof to Hurricane Maria, deep in the mountains not far from his own house. A gate protects the entrance to the long narrow road that leads up to it.

The owner, a friend, agreed to rent him the damaged house for the fights.

“We’re going to have somebody at the gate with a walkie-talkie to let us know if the cops come,” Ríos said, standing outside the gate. “But nobody should bother us up here.”

Abandoning a way of life

While the thought of abandoning the vocation that has sustained his family for six generations is painful, José Torres said he has no choice.

“I don’t endorse clandestine fights,” he said. “I can’t get arrested. I have three children to support.”

Torres hopes the federal lawsuit challenging the cockfighting ban will buy Puerto Rico’s cockfighters a little more time. But in case it doesn’t, he’s making plans to leave Puerto Rico, to find work in the United States and send the money back to his wife and children.

“There’s nothing else for me here,” he said, “with the way Puerto Rico’s economy is.”

He said he still doesn’t know where he’ll go. Maybe Florida. In the weeks ahead, he’s going to fight as many of his roosters as he can. And to figure out what to do with the rest. Anything but turn them over to authorities.

“We’ll have to eat them. Or give them away,” he said. “We can’t set them free. They’ll kill each other.”

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Updated at 1:35 a.m. ET

The Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros 5-4 in Game 1 of the 2019 World Series, led by Juan Soto who homered and doubled in his first Series game.

Soto also had a single and a stolen base to go with his 3 RBIs. The young standout turns all of 21 on Friday.

“After the first at-bat, I just said, ‘It’s another baseball game,'” Soto said, according to The Associated Press. “In the first at-bat, I’m not going to lie, I was a little bit shaking in my legs.”

The victory gives the Nationals what they wanted: a win in Houston against one of baseball’s best pitchers, Gerrit Cole. It was Cole’s first loss since May.

The Nats lead the Series 1-0.

The Astros, the American league champions, jumped out to an early lead, scoring two runs in the bottom of the first inning off Nationals ace Max Scherzer. Astros slugger Yuli Gurriel doubled home teammates George Springer and José Altuve.

The Nationals responded in the top of the second inning with a solo home run by Ryan Zimmerman on a two-out, first pitch by Cole.

The 35-year-old Zimmerman was the Nationals’ first player to be drafted by the team after its move from Montreal to Washington, D.C. in 2005.

“It’s been a long ride,” Zimmerman said according to the AP. “First at-bat, to hit a home run and run around the bases, you’re kind of almost floating around the bases.”

“I’ll be honest with you, my eyes got a little watery for him,” manager Dave Martinez said. “He waited a long time to be in this position, and for him to hit that first home run and put us on the board was awesome.”

The Nationals evened the score at 2-2 on Soto’s solo home run off of Cole to open the fourth frame.

Washington, the National League champions, took the lead for good in the top of the fifth inning on a single by third baseman Adam Eaton, scoring Kurt Suzuki who had opened the inning with a walk, making the score 3-2. Two batters later, Soto smacked a two-run double to left field, bringing the score to 5-2.

The Astros narrowed the lead to 5-3 in the bottom of the seventh inning with a solo home run by Springer off of Nats reliever Tanner Rainey. They loaded the bases on two walks and an infield hit, when Daniel Hudson relieved Rainey and closed the inning by striking out Yordan Alvarez.

The Astros opened the bottom of the eighth inning with a single by pinch-hitter Kyle Tucker, who advanced to second on a fly-out and then scored on a double by Springer, cutting the lead to 5-4.

Nats ace reliever Sean Doolittle, the fifth pitcher put in play by the team, retired the Astros in the bottom of the ninth inning without incident. The Astros left 11 runners on base, the Nationals only four.

At a sober post-game news conference, Astros manager AJ Hinch acknowledged it was not the opener he had expected.

“[Cole’s] been so good for so long that there builds this thought of invincibility and that it’s impossible to beat him,” Hinch said according to the AP. “So when it happens it is a surprise to all of us.”

“I didn’t have my A-game tonight,” Cole said. “Outside of a few pitches that tacked on a few runs, we worked pretty well with what we had. These are the two best teams in the world right now so you try not to beat yourself up too much, especially if you’ve got to grind in those situations.”

43,339 watched the Series opener in Houston’s Minute Maid Park. Game 2 is Wednesday night.

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The Houston Astros have had a season to remember: 107 regular season wins against just 55 losses. The Astros are heavy favorites to win their second World Series in three years. The series starts Tuesday evening.

Yet a celebratory rant by a senior executive after they clinched the pennant over the weekend has shifted attention to unwelcome subjects off the field, including domestic violence and the team’s handling of female reporters.

On Saturday night, not long after the victory, Astros Assistant General Manager Brandon Taubman targeted a small cluster of female reporters with a profane defense of reliever Roberto Osuna.

According to three eyewitnesses interviewed by NPR, Taubman appeared to be responding to the presence of a female reporter who was wearing a purple rubber bracelet to heighten awareness about domestic violence.

That reporter has tweeted repeatedly about the issue over the years. Taubman complained last year that some of the reporter’s informational tweets — promoting domestic violence hotline telephone numbers, for example — appeared moments after Osuna entered several Astros games in relief.

That’s no coincidence: Osuna’s contract was acquired by the Astros from the Toronto Blue Jays. While with the Blue Jays, he was arrested and accused in Canada of assaulting the mother of his then-3-year-old child. Osuna did not face charges after agreeing to the equivalent of a restraining order.

The scene after the game

Teammates mobbed second baseman Jose Altuve on Saturday night after he hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to clinch the pennant.

In the clubhouse, lockers and walls were sheathed in plastic sheeting, and reporters were clad in raincoats as players doused each other with Champagne.

Osuna had given up a three-run homer in the top of the ninth, but Altuve’s blast made a winner out of him.

“Altuve picked us up, picked me up, and we’re here,” Osuna told local station KHOU.

Later that evening, at the other end of the clubhouse, Taubman held court and chomped on a cigar.

“This was after most of that chaos has dissipated,” says Stephanie Apstein, a baseball writer for Sports Illustrated who had been covering the Yankees pennant drive. She ducked into the Astros’ clubhouse to get color for her story. “Most of the players were either with their families or on the field or getting dressed. So it was actually kind of unusual. You don’t see that many front-office people in those celebrations.”

In addition to the three eyewitnesses, NPR conducted four additional interviews to report this story. The Astros did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment. NPR is not currently naming the reporter or her outlet as she asked not to be drawn into the growing public controversy.

Celebrating Saturday in the clubhouse, Taubman shouted loudly and profanely at a cluster of female reporters, according to several accounts: “Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so [profanity] glad we got Osuna!”

Taubman is considered part of the front office’s nerd squad — executives who place high importance on data analysis in service of success on the baseball diamond.

Astros pledged $300K toward projects against domestic violence after hiring Osuna

The team’s number crunchers considered Osuna a steal, because he was damaged goods, or in financial terms, a distressed asset.

The Astros pledged about $300,000 toward domestic violence projects after local activists raised objections, according to press reports.

“When these teams trade for players with reprehensible pasts, they say that they understand this is the start of a conversation and that they want to,” says Sports Illustrated’s Apstein, who was one of the three female journalists subjected to Taubman’s tirade.

“They think that they can raise awareness for the topic and they want to keep talking about this. But then when people ask them to talk about it, they act like they are the aggrieved parties in this situation.”

In a column revealing the incident, Apstein did not focus on her colleague. She wrote that Taubman’s outburst reflects a “forgive-and-forget” approach by major league baseball to domestic violence. The league put out a statement Tuesday saying it takes domestic violence seriously and will investigate the incident. It noted that the Astros were disputing her account.

In a formal statement, the Astros defended Taubman aggressively, calling Apstein’s column “misleading and completely irresponsible” and saying the executive was just supporting a player. The team said it was “extremely disappointed in Sports Illustrated’s attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.”

The Astros have had a rocky relationship with the media in the recent past. The club tossed a reporter from the Detroit Free Press out of the team’s locker room after star pitcher Justin Verlander didn’t want to take his questions. The team barred another reporter from the hometown Houston Chronicle.

“It’s just arrogance. That is what the organizational philosophy with the Houston Astros is,” ESPN baseball columnist Jeff Passan said on Outside the Lines. “The Astros always, when they are attacked, will attack back. And that’s what this was, despite the fact that we’re on Day 1 of the World Series … talking about this and not Gerrit Cole versus Max Scherzer.”

Subsequently on Tuesday, the team issued a more contrite statement pointing to its involvement in domestic violence initiatives. And on Tuesday afternoon, Taubman released his own apology, saying he was overexuberant — and misunderstood.

“My over-exuberance in support of a player has been misrepresented as a demonstration of a regressive attitude about an important social issue,” he wrote in the statement. “Those that know me know that I am a progressive member of the community, and a loving and committed husband and father. I hope that those who do know me understand that the Sports Illustrated article does not reflect who I am or my values. I am sorry if anyone was offended by my actions.”

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Another round of federal criminal charges has hit the plea deal holdouts in the Varsity Blues college admissions bribery scandal that broke earlier this year.

Eleven defendants, including actress Lori Loughlin, were charged Tuesday by a grand jury in Boston with conspiring to commit federal program bribery by paying employees at the University of Southern California to admit the defendants’ children as athletic recruits or other favored admissions categories. One of those parents, John Wilson of Lynnfield, Mass., is charged with two additional counts of bribery conspiracy for allegedly paying to get his children admitted to Harvard University and Stanford University.

Seven university coaches and other university officials also face new charges
of conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud as well as honest services mail and wire fraud. Three of them — former USC athletics administrator Donna Heinel, former Georgetown tennis coach Gordon Ernst, and former UCLA men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo — face additional charges of committing federal program bribery.

The latest charges increase pressure on the defendants, whose arraignment dates have not yet been set, to plead guilty prior to their cases going to trial. On Monday, four other parents entered plea agreements before the new charges were made. Of the 52 people ensnared in the admissions scandal, a total of 29 have now agreed to plead guilty.

With these new charges added to previous ones, the defendants who insist on their innocence and have rejected plea offers now face up to 45 years in prison if found guilty on all counts.

The wealthy business people and celebrities facing new charges include Full House actress Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli. They are accused of paying a $500,000 bribe to officials at USC to get their two daughters admitted as recruits for the university’s crew team. Neither of them had even practiced the sport.

Meanwhile, Desperate Housewives actress Felicity Huffman started serving a 14-day term in prison last week after entering a guilty plea in the scandal.

The conspiracy to commit federal bribery charges are based on a federal statute that’s triggered whenever a bribe of at least $5,000 is given to an organization that receives more than $10,000 from the federal government. Virtually every higher education institution in the country, both public and private, would fit that category.

The $25 million college admission scandal’s mastermind, William “Rick” Singer, has pleaded guilty to four federal charges and is cooperating with federal prosecutors.

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